Among the myriad reasons people want to live in Davis - "college town," "good schools," "one hour from San Francisco," "proximity to wine country," "bike friendly," etc. - one you’ll hear quite often this time of year is how quickly you can depart the Davis plateau and arrive in the snowy Sierra peaks that surround Lake Tahoe. When you live in Davis, you’re 90 minutes from "fresh powder," as the skiers and snowboarders like to say.

Perhaps you need to live somewhere else before you can really appreciate how awesome that fact is. And that’s why many UC Davis students are passionately involved with skiing and snowboarding each winter quarter; some more than others. About 35 of them join the UCD Ski and Snowboard Team, a club team unaffiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association that competes with regional universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, Sierra Nevada and Sierra College in events like the slalom, giant slalom and freestyle. The competitions are run by the United States Collegiate Ski and Snowboard Association (www.uscsa.com).

To become a member of the team isn’t nearly as difficult as being a member of the team. For instance, third-year cell biology major Jonathan Sheu (whose friends call him Lauren) joined the