On the surface, UC Davis is a large university with a reputation for a competitive veterinary medicine program and having a lot of bicycles. That’s right, Davis is known for its number of bicycles.

According to Davis’s Bike Plan, which covers everything from building new bikeways to enforcing bicycle codes, an estimated 15,000 to 18,000 bicycles are in use on campus during the week.

With those numbers, it is no surprise that the Davis University Police Department has created a bicycle-based patrol unit. There is also a bicycle traffic school for students who have been given moving violations on their bicycles.

“They are anal about bicyclists following traffic laws,” said Michelle Jung, a junior in biochemistry at Davis. “The bike patrol will even pull you over for speeding on your bike.”

Bicyclists are expected to follow all traffic regulations listed in the California Vehicle Code. This means that a student can be cited for running a stop sign on their bike. It also means that a citation is in store if a student is caught going more than 15 mph on a bike trail or more than 10 mph in the parking lots. There is also a strictly enforced bicycle parking code.Students can be cited for illegally parking bikes, according to Davis’s Transportation and Parking Services. As a result, there will be no locking your bike to a railing on the Davis campus. All bicycles must be parked in a bicycle parking area or locked to a bike parking device.

A student’s bicycle can even be impounded for violating the bicycle traffic code.

With all those regulations, riding a bicycle on the Davis campus sounds just as difficult as driving a car. It’s closer than it seems, especially since all bicycles used on campus must be registered with a California Bicycle License.

There is even an auction held twice a year to sell abandoned or unclaimed bicycles.

Driving through the city of Davis, the bike presence is felt everywhere. There are bike racks everywhere. There are traffic signals just for bikes.Bike parking is almost as bad as car parking at Davis, and that is with only a certain portion of the student population receiving parking permits.According to Davis’s parking services, only students who are not living in the residence halls or in student housing are allowed to buy the general parking permit. There is even a permit for night classes that can only be used between certain hours.

Double-decker buses are used by Davis’s Unitrans system. According to Wikipedia, the free Internet-based encyclopedia, it is believed that Unitrans is the only general-purpose transit system using the London-style, double-decker buses.

The big red buses operate around campus and around the city, ferrying students from apartment to campus, from one end of the vast campus to another, and back again.

It is no wonder that the buses are popular, considering it takes considerably more time to walk from one end of the Davis campus to the other than it does to traverse the Sacramento State campus.

While walking through the Davis campus, should a student choose to walk, visitors to the campus may feel as though they are being watched. They are being watched, but don’t worry, it’s only the “Eggheads.”

These sculptures, which were commissioned for artist Robert Arneson in 1989, speckle the campus with egg-shaped heads with various expressions on their faces. The works are supposed to be based on the slang label for intellectuals. It’s appropriate, considering where the sculptures are located.

One of the most “intellectual” of all the eggheads is located in front of the library. It is called “Bookhead” and depicts, what else, but an egghead with its nose stuck in a book. There is another egghead entitled “Stargazer” that is looking up toward the sky with a hopeful expression on its face. Maybe it should be renamed “Hoping for Financial Aid” since Davis tuition is certainly not cheap.

Davis students pay around $7,457 in fees for the academic year, compared to Sac State’s $3,072, it makes sense that students would get a break from local retailers.

A little-known tradition in the city is a thing called “cheap Tuesdays” where businesses around town give discounts to students. Movies are cheaper. Ice cream shops around the campus give discounts to students who come in.Probably the most pervasive of Davis’s quirks is the smell. No matter where a visitor is on campus, the smell of livestock can be smelled, and it’s not a pleasant aroma.

“The pig smell is the worst,” John Nguyen, a senior in philosophy, said. “I found out from personal experience.”

Since the campus is home to anything from rabbits to horses, it makes sense that the smell would be less than spectacular.

Another small quirk of the campus across the Causeway is a certain class known as “tractor driving.”

It is a class that is almost always full and it’s easy to tell why. The title says it all. Students go out to the South Davis field and learn how to drive a tractor, for credit.

“It almost makes me want to transfer to Davis,” Nathan Berger, a junior in history, said. “That is beyond awesome.”

The tractor driving class harkens back to when Davis was just a place called “university farm” created for 40 students from UC Berkeley to learn agriculture.

In fact, that’s where the “Aggies” came from. According to the Davis student life Web site, the nickname of “Aggies” was simply a way to differentiate Davis from the “Townies” of UC Berkeley. Since then, the Aggies have been given a mascot in the form of a mustang named “Gunrock”.

Yet, with all this talk about the quirks of Davis, what ever happened to the famed Causeway Classic?

“It’s not really a well known rivalry,” Kenny Ug, who just graduate from Davis, said. “It’s not at the scale of Berkeley-Stanford and UCLA-USC.”

Jenna Hughes can be reached [email protected]