Add Chris Jones to the list.

The list, that is, of professional cyclists who call Central Oregon home.

In October, Jones moved to Bend with his wife, Cassandra, from Auburn, Calif., after living there for three years. Unlike many of Central Oregon’s elite athletes, though, Jones, 33, did not move here primarily for his profession. Rather, it was more for the lifestyle, for a place to enjoy the outdoors, and for what Jones wants beyond his cycling career and when he and Cassandra start their family.

“So far, it seems like we made the right decision,” Jones said by phone recently while returning to Bend after a 10-day training stint back in Auburn, which is near Sacramento. “We don’t have to get in our car to go anywhere. We can ride our bikes or walk everywhere there on the west side.”

The relocation to Bend came during a cyclocross season in which Jones has excelled. For most of the year, he races as a road cyclist as a member of the UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team. But during the fall, Jones competes in cyclocross for Team Rapha-Focus.

“I’m kind of like a road guy with a bad cyclocross habit, I guess you could say,” explained Jones, who grew up in Redding, Calif., and earned a business degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

In December in his newly adopted hometown, Jones wrapped up his best finish to date in the annual U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross series — fifth place — finishing behind teammate Jeremy Powers and another Bend pro, Ryan Trebon, among others. He posted a runner-up finish behind Powers in the fourth race of the series, in Fort Collins, Colo., and took fourth place on three other occasions, including the second race of the Deschutes Brewery Cup in Bend.

“People always ask me, they’re like, ‘How do you manage to do both?’ ” Jones said about road and cyclocross racing. “First of all, I’m pretty fortunate to be a professional cyclist. I could be sitting in a cubicle somewhere, so I never take (it) for granted. But then, the fact that my second job is racing cyclocross … it makes it real easy to transition every year, and it’s something I look forward to as road season winds down.”

Jones took up cycling as a commuter when he was 24 and turned professional at age 27 after having worked as a construction engineer. He has been racing cyclocross for just four or five years, he said, but his results suggest he is starting to get the hang of the cycling discipline, which takes competitors over looped courses of grass, dirt, mud and pavement, and requires them to negotiate obstacles such as staircases and barriers.

“There’s just a lot of skills I was lacking and still am lacking. I’m slowly learning them and having fun,” Jones noted, referencing his coming from a road riding background. “After being on the road for such a long season, it’s just refreshing to come to cyclocross. The fans are crazy and they’re right there in your face. And the competitors, we’re all friends off the course, but once we get out there, you’re not cutting anyone any slack.”

Currently, Jones has his sights set on the USA Cycling Cyclo-cross National Championships, which kick off in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday. The elite men’s race, in which Jones is expected to compete, is slated for Sunday. In 2012, also in Madison, he took sixth for the top cyclocross nationals finish of his career. But he has designs on an even better outcome this time.

“I think this year, if I’m outside of the top five, I’ll be disappointed,” Jones admitted. “And the way that race works, if you’re in the top five, you’re going for the win as well. Everybody brings their game.”

A result like that top-five finish could cement his selection for the U.S. team for the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships, slated for Feb. 2-3 in Louisville, Ky. This edition of the world championships will be the first staged outside of Europe, where the sport is wildly popular. Jones, who represented the United States at the 2012 world championships in Belgium, said he expects the American team will surprise at the event and that it has been hotly anticipated by a number of the top U.S. riders.

“If I’m not selected, then that’s OK,” he said. “That means they took someone that was better than me, and the most important thing, I think, is that as the host nation, we put our best riders out there.”

If Jones does make the team, his road season with UnitedHealthcare, he said, will be delayed for a couple of weeks. But whether or not he makes the U.S. cyclocross team, he will not be spending much time in his new Bend home over the coming months. For much of the calendar year, Jones is based in Spain and racing in Europe for UnitedHealthcare. He joined the team in 2011 as a domestique for the Australian Rory Sutherland, who is moving on to Team Saxo-Tinkoff in 2013. So this year, Jones said, he will shepherd around the team’s sprinters.

“My job primarily for the sprinters is to take care of them, like look after them from the time the race starts until we get to about … a kilometer or two to go,” Jones explained. “I’m not a big enough, fast enough guy to actually be there and sprint with them and be productive.”

So more Central Oregon adventures for Jones may have to wait until he returns in the late fall or early spring. In just the few months he has resided in Bend, Jones has gone skate skiing, backcountry skiing, and fly fishing on the Deschutes River. He has also explored local breweries and restaurants with wife Cassandra, who accompanies him to Europe.

All that travel is the price Jones must — and seems willing to — pay for a career he feels fortunate to have fallen into.

“Going to school was really important and getting my degree and then having a job, like a real job, it’s given me a different perspective than a lot of guys have,” Jones noted. “It makes me really appreciate cycling in that I’ve been able to do it and I am still able to do it. I don’t take things for granted.”