Ah, San Luis Obispo, the happiest place in the country, my old college town, and the last leg of our trip to CA. This place holds many memories. It’s where I first developed my enthusiasm for bicycling and where I grew to love the feel of a small, walkable town. It had been about 8 years since I’d been back, and this was the first time that Emily has ever been.

Our first activity was hiking in Poly Canyon. It’s hard to get across just how fairy-tale amazeballs this situation is. There’s a seemingly boundless expanse of hills with an active train track that runs between hills, stunning hiking trails, and world class mountain biking.literally connected to the campus. And that’s just one of a handful of similar areas within walking distance that surround the town. And the weather is always perfect.

We hiked here twice: once with my friend and SLO native, Mike, and another time with my college buddy, Alvin.

We had a picnic with some yerba mate provided by Alvin and some oranges provided by my mom’s garden. We walked across a bridge on the trail, and when we turned back, a couple of horses were crossing the bridge and walking toward us. They seemed to be Cal Poly horses, but they basically had the run of the place. Mike pointed out excitedly that one of them was a roan.

Within Poly Canyon is an architecture graveyard called Poly Canyon Design Village. There’s apparently a design/build contest there every year, and the structures are usually torn down immediately afterwards, but some of the structures of old remain. Cal Poly is known for its architecture program, and these are some of the fun artifacts it has left behind. The “shell house” was particularly impressive the way the design worked with the landscape. Many of the structures have “do not enter” signs posted, but most people ignore them.

Alvin and I cruised nostalgically through our alma mater. It made me miss the culture of being in a university setting where one’s primary goal is to learn new things and expand one’s horizons. Alvin said something about how any information one could possibly want to know is on the Internet now, but something about this kind of place really sets the stage for learning without as many distractions.

Mike treated us to lunch at his apartment and gave us the historical walking tour of downtown SLO, regaling us of stories about each building we passed by. One was a memory of when he was a toddler and his parents owned a restaurant. The phenomenon of potato chips had just spread to the west coast, and he remembered the first sensation of hot oil dripping down his throat when his mom offered him his first homemade potato chip.

We also made an obligatory stop at Bubblegum alley, a simultaneously disgusting and awe-inspiring, grassroots landmark that never dies, despite at least three attempts!

And no trip to San Luis Obispo would be complete without a mountain bike ride. I brought along my helmet and my cleats, rented a bike for a half day at $20, and went on the first mountain bike ride I had been on in 8 years. I felt like a fish in the sea. I had forgotten how much different mountain biking is from road biking. There’s something about thoroughly exerting yourself to climb 1,000 feet and feeling simultaneously so capable and also so minuscule in the context of the expansive surroundings. Maybe it’s realizing the potential of the rest of the world and the people in it and thinking about how much of it is untapped.

And then riding downhill is just fun. Poly Canyon has sprouted some quite nice trick trails in the past 8 years. Here’s a video of someone else going down one of them. I went down this one, but at a much more leisurely pace.