I have deep connections to both issues, so this article grabbed me. Late-stage sufferers of Parkinson’s disease, whose walking and running is generally confined to what they can do in their dreams, could ride bikes with a fluidity unimaginable to anyone who’s witnessed the indignities of the illness.

My grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away about six months ago (as anyone who’s met me even once between now and then probably knows). She suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for pretty much my entire life, and she fended off the worst parts of the disease until a few years ago. But her stories as a young girl include several iconic episodes involving bikes. She escaped  several brushes with death in the Holocaust, including a time when she, her brother and her brother’s friend fled to the border on bikes. I think about her favorite painting, too: Monet’s poppy field, because it reminded her of a field where she had ridden her bicycle before she came to America but after the Nazis had taken power.

I would like to think that this miracle – people with Parkinson’s riding bikes as easily as they ever could – might contain a hint about curing the disease or understanding how it takes hold.

I also like to think of my 83-year-old grandmother, always full of so much life even until the end, kicking Parkinson’s ass while riding a bike.And hey, if there’s one more way I’m connected to her, and one more thing I can do to honor her memory, I’m not going to complain.