Summer came to the Jersey Shore today.

Eighty-four and sunny and time to break out the bike and pedal along the streets of Little Silver. I skirted the outskirts of town, riding down to the Shrewsbury River, then turning up toward the train station. On a sidestreet, I passed a young couple out in the front yard with their baby, giggling and crawling in the grass. He waved, I smiled, and she offered a charming "Hello." I love living in my small town.

The weather was conducive to taking the long way to work, and I got in the car at 4:45, opened the sunroof and rolled down the windows and put on The Sundays' "Summertime" as I headed East. Over the bridge and into Sea Bright, the traffic backed up and it was like late June, not late April. Customers sat outside Dave's Ice Cream -- the shop my friend's mom runs -- and the parking lot for the beach was packed. Cars lined up at the two traffic lights on Ocean Avenue before the traffic picked up as we headed south toward Long Branch.

I wanted to stop at the Windmill and get a burger and eat it on the deck looking across the road and the buildings to the horizon, the Atlantic Ocean stretching out at dusk. Every side street I looked down as I drove led to the beach, the blue water beyond the dead end, where people stood or sat and enjoyed the ocean breezes.

I had friends in college who formed a ska band and called it Skalcaholics and for two years we drank and danced in clubs and bars and a few campus apperances and formed memories with ska covers and originals as the soundtrack. I put their CD in and immediately remembered the words to songs about the Commodore 64, "Press Your Luck" on TV, the super snowmobile man, Jack The Ripper and 1888, Louis Tulley's lament and the marvel of London's Underground transportation.

After graduating, after packing up the apartment and taking one last drive out to Main Circle at Notre Dame and taking a poignant photo of the Golden Dome in my rear-view mirror, three of us headed east in a caravan, driving alone through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania back to New Jersey. I had the CD on tape for my car and listened to it nonstop through the two-day, 900-mile drive. And I put the CD in now and immediately I remember those days and the sad thing is I'll never have new memories with that music. One of the band members got married last summer in Chicago, and we put the CD on at the end of the reception and danced fast and hard on the dance floor for the final half hour, after most of the older adults had left, and those will likely be my most recent memories from the music.