“So, are you from here?” I asked Jonny Ziegler as I alternately writhed and muscled my way into a wetsuit in the parking lot of Pismo Beach. Ziegler, owner of Sandbar Surf School, watched patiently as his coppery tan legs dangled from the open container of his box truck. It was stocked chock-full of surfboards and wetsuits of varying sizes and colors. This one seemed too small for me.

“Born and raised. Where else?” he said matter-of-factly with an amicable grin on his sunglass-clad face, as if there could be no other answer. Jonny’s reply seemed odd to me at the time, but I would come to learn that this was a lot of locals’ attitude toward San Luis Obispo County, aka SLO CAL. But as a native of NorCal, I couldn’t say I felt the same way about California. I moved to loud, buzzing, hectic-would-be-an-understatement New York when I was 18 and only looked back intermittently.

Still, boasting 315 days of sunshine a year, coastal views that rival the Mediterranean, and a bounty of fresh seafood and produce, it’s easy to see how the Central Coast of California is a place few can imagine leaving. From Ragged Point and San Simeon in the North, where William Randolph Hearst famously constructed his elaborate estate, to the sandy dunes of Nipomo in the South and stretching just far enough inland to lie against the San Joaquin Valley, San Luis Obispo County is a place tourists flocking to San Francisco and Los Angeles have somehow left largely untouched.

Despite the appeal of dramatic cliffsides plunging into the Pacific and the beach towns sleepily spooning them, unpretentious SLO CAL has managed to preserve its essential Caliness. Its bucolic surfer vibes, old-school vintage stores, coastal wilderness, and nothing-if-not-casual atmosphere all remain intact, rolling along placidly, day by day. It was easy to slip into the effortless speed of San Luis Obispo County, even for a New Yorker. It was as slow as you’d expect, but not once was it boring.

Having seen so much of the coast, we now decided to go for a dip in the ocean. We drove a short distance to the quintessentially Californian surf town of Pismo Beach, which is exactly what you’d imagine if you pictured vintage California — surf shops, palm trees, vintage vibes, and a 1,200-foot pier. This is where Jonny comes in. Local, native, all-around good-natured guy, Jonny is the third owner of Sandbar Surf School and an active surfer himself.

After assisting me into the wetsuit, he assigned me to surf instructor Karlie, a Cali girl if you ever knew one. Blonde and tan, a yoga instructor and kinesiology student who learned to surf in San Diego, she gave me many pieces of instruction on what to do with my body in those two hours. But only one piece of general advice stuck with me when it came to standing on a board: “The wave’s coming, so you gotta do something.” Absurdly simple, and yet it worked.