Cycling Down the Champs-Elysees Frame Color:Unframed the default clich'© image of

the default clich'© image of the chic Parisienne is a young woman in a flouncy skirt and high heels pedaling insouciantly along the Seine

This illustration is by Keetra Dean Dixon

or keep it from falling apart

which she blessed

year in and year out

Cycling Down the Champs-Elysees Frame Color:Unframed the default clich'© image ofA family rides bicycles on the Champs Elysees on a Sunday morning in 1956 in Paris, where cycling has always evoked freedom. "Historically, the French have had a romantic attachment to their bikes," The Times has written. "Though the first functioning two wheeler is thought to have been invented by a German in 1817, it was the French who popularized and marketed the device in the 1860s, giving it the name 'bicycle.' " There are no bicycle helmet laws