Pat Daugherty hasn’t been a part of the Tavern Restaurant for its whole history. It just seems that way. Since 1980, Daugherty, 62, has owned the landmark downtown State College establishment that’s celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

David Pryde builds homes, and business is good.

Neither the subprime lending crisis nor a real estate bubble has hurt his trade. He just keeps selling homes, and occupants keep flocking to them.

Describing what Kim Morrison does with sugar and frosting as simply “cake decorating” is like describing what Michelangelo did to the Sistine Chapel as simply “painting.”

Book a room at The Haven at Center Hill, a 104-acre estate and wildlife preserve six miles east of Lewisburg, and you get more than just a room.

It’s an overcast, gray day, with a few stray snowflakes swirling in the chill wind slicing through central Pennsylvania — until you step through this door in Centre Hall.

Minutes from rocketing up and down curving walls on a bike, Jamie Bestwick pauses. Something bothers him.

Surely, it’s not the drop, 13 feet from the wooden half pipe ramp’s deck to its trough. For him, that’s no more worrisome than brushing his teeth.

And it certainly can’t be soaring another 12 feet or so over the opposite rim, corkscrewing, flipping upside down and sticking the landing so he can rush toward another aerial feat. When you’re a legendary BMX vert rider, all that’s as daunting as grocery shopping.

No, he’s fine with everything inside Camp Woodward’s Cloud Nine building, his regular training grounds in Haines Township — except the music. That’s got to go. All afternoon he and other pro riders have trained to a bouncy dance mix. Now someone below is changing tapes.

“No more techno for tonight,” Jamie calls out.

She was old and worn down, largely forgotten, her features dulled by time and neglect. Centre Furnace Mansion was dying, but Jackie Melander looked at the cornices and gables and saw new life.

Just off Whitehall Road, a few miles from downtown State College, sits the Hudson home. Surrounded by farmlands, it is set far back from the road, on nine pastoral acres. It’s a welcoming house, with traditional white wooden siding and a large front porch.

Lunch is on Dino Campanis. Really, he insists. The man must sell shoes at his Bellefonte store for a living, but he likes to give. For five years, he gave his free time to answer Christmas letters from local children until student groups took over the job.

It’s high season for entertaining, and somewhere between the daily bustle and holiday hustle, you’ve got a party to plan. Coming up with new ways to make your party stand out isn’t always easy, so we asked some of the area’s top entertaining pros to share their ideas for fresh ways to add sparkle to your bash.

In honor of the start of another blustery winter season, Good Life went in search of the best ski resorts within a five-hour drive of State College. We discovered that while upstate New York and Vermont are acknowledged to offer the East’s best runs, there are plenty of mountains relatively close to home that serve up everything from hair-raising black-diamond trails suitable only for experts to gentle green-circle hills perfect for beginners.

It’s warm for autumn, and in the shady yard outside a one-room schoolhouse, a small group of Amish children are enjoying a break from their studies. Bill Coleman pulls his car up alongside the weathered fence surrounding the schoolyard, and seven or eight children, laughing and smiling, come running.

They climb on the fence, jockeying for position, calling out: “Hi Bill! What are you doing here?”

“Are you going to take my picture?”

Maybe later, Bill says, once they are home. He introduces them to his passenger.

“This is Titus. That’s Samuel. There’s Hannah, and Eli.” He pauses a moment, pretending to forget, then continues. “Over there, that’s monkey nose, and next to him is freckle face.” It’s a silly joke, but one that sends the children into peals of laughter. They chatter happily, then are gone, back inside to await the day’s final bell.

In seven minutes, Jeff Stillwagon must lift several tons into the air and become someone’s best chance to live.

It doesn’t matter what’s going on. He could be napping or sinking his teeth into a pizza slice. When the call tones sound in the Life Flight base at University Park Airport, if the weather’s safe, the veteran pilot drops everything, grabs his flight helmet and heads for the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter outside.

A motorist lies unconscious on a road. A patient waits for a transplant.

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In a sea of green, Dixie Lee Witt created a rainbow archipelago.

Once, lawns dotted by a few trees bracketed her ranch home near Bellefonte. Dixie, a Centre County master gardener, surveyed her domain and found it dull.

“I thought what a waste this is when you can do something great,” she said.

Two decades later, her handiwork dazzles.

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There’s a curvy white convertible in the driveway, the kind of sexy ride that looks fast even at a standstill. If this car was a woman, it’d cause whiplash.

It’s the only car in a driveway in the State College neighborhood where I’m looking for the home of Tawni O’Dell, New York Times best-selling author. The car, I figure, has to be hers.

She answers the door wearing black spandex shorts and a tank top, a thin headband barely restraining her long brown curls. In her spacious and airy living room, she sits on a curvy sofa, tucking her long legs beneath her as we settle in to talk. It turns out the car, a Nissan 350Z convertible roadster, is brand new, the first real treat since her rocket ride to fame began nearly eight years ago.

You can always take a drive to take in the glory of autumn in Pennsylvania, but if you really want to experience the crisp air and glowing colors, leave the gas guzzler at home and try an inn-to-inn bicycle tour.

With more paved and back roads than any other state, scenic Pennsylvania is bicycling heaven. And after you’ve worked up an appetite with a long ride, the inn-to-inn tours offer cozy luxury, a cool drink and mouth-watering meals at the end of the day.