muscle memory

this song by the singer-actor-musician-person Hilary Duff seems to play every time I stop at the local grocery store. you can listen to it over here if you don't remember how it goes.

I, somehow, remember it pretty well now that I keep hearing it.

even on first re-hearing it a few weeks ago, it astonished me how deeply and fully I recognize and remember this song. this song from 2003 that I don't have particular memories connected to or anything. as far as I remember, it was just popular back then. on the radio all the time.

and now it seems to be on all the time again. or the grocery store has limited music on rotation. who knows.

does anyone still listen to music on the radio?

lately I have been biking around town and to campus a little bit. around the neighborhood for exercise. across the river for lunch.

the feeling of being on a bike in a small college town takes me back to the early 2000s in a way similar to the lyrics of "So Yesterday," but it is much less surprising that this happens. muscle memory is supposed to be deep. riding a bike is supposed to be unforgettable.

as a Purdue student, I think I biked to campus a total of six times the whole five years I was there. West Lafayette had too many steep hills in it.

Logan, Utah also had some steep hills (like the one this building sat on), but I was younger back then and it wasn't so hot and humid all the time either.

as an undergraduate, too, I had particularly limited choices about transportation. unless the car-owning people in my life were willing to offer rides, I had to bike or bus or walk myself everywhere. and thankfully there were wide roads and sidewalks and plenty of space for all those things. and free buses, too. (I miss a good handful of things about Indiana now that it's almost 2 months since we left it, and the relatively sleek public transport is among that handful of things.)

the feeling of being on a bike is a somewhat precarious feeling. balancing. weaving. it's familiar, but my muscles and my breathing are still readjusting.

a new fall semester always requires readjusting. remembering, but also putting away the past to face new things. it probably feels more precarious than it really is.