WHY: The hat trick: weather, terrain, cycling-friendly infrastructure

MUST-RIDE: Bayshore Bikeway: 24 breathtaking miles around San Diego Bay – free ferry ride included

COOL EVENT: Midnight Madness: Ride at midnight? Of course. But the party -- including a costume contest – starts at 8

HANGOUT: Karl Strauss Brewing Company; karlstrauss.com

LOCAL INFO: San Diego Bicycle Club; sdbc.org

BIKE SHOP: Black Mountain Bicycles; blackmountainbicycles.com

What do you call a place that sits on the ocean, but that’s also close to the mountains; where the temperature rarely dips below 50 degrees, or goes higher than the low 80s; where there are more the 850 miles of bike lanes and routes (with 300 miles added in the last three years), easy access to killer mountain bike trails, plus a velodrome and a nearby Olympic Training Center? A perfect place to ride? We thought so. Welcome to San Diego.

“You can easily do any type of ride here, from short and flat to ‘Oh my God?’” says Kathy Keehan, executive director of the San Diego Bicycle Coalition. Sure, pavement abounds, but there’s plenty of off-road riding, as well. “From my backyard, I can get on a trail that goes through a little canyon and connects up to Lake Hodges, which is a huge network of trails,” Keehan says. “And it’s the same for lots of people here.” Cyclists are such an ingrained part of the city that, when Keehan and other advocates go to city-planning meetings, they rarely need to fight for bike inclusion. “We ask, ‘What about bikes?’” she says, “and a lot of the time, the answer is, ‘We’ve already taken care of that.’” We wish more cities could get the same response.