“I rode the bike.”
Ding.
“I rode the bike.”
Gabby Giffords smiles as her iPad chimes. Sentence formed. Way too easy. The smile is magnetic, if slightly crooked: Her dimples burrow a little deeper on the left side. Her left eyebrow is more expressive, while the right looks permanently arched.
Gabby sits at her cozy breakfast table in an aquamarine sweatsuit and Ruth Bader Ginsburg socks that read “I DISSENT.” It’s hour two of speech therapy, and the iPad’s voice recognition helps journal her day. A summerlike day in Tucson, two weeks before Christmas, it began with the ride around her neighborhood on a customized recumbent trike. Gabby’s left leg provides most of the power and all the direction, teaching the left brain with each rotation. Nine years after the gunshot, she can walk on her own with a brace and even managed the 25-mile El Tour de Tucson bike trek last fall.
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