Tip 85: Let your significant other dictate how many bikes you own

Once there are bikes in the bedroom and the loungeroom, and the many important differences between a cyclocross bike and a fully rigid mountain bike are something you can no longer successfully explain, you may realize there is a hidden clause: Til death do us part, except if another effing bike shows up in this house.

BONUS TIP: Steal back your independence by letting loose on cycling jerseys.

Tip 84: Ride without fenders

Get a clean lean look on your ride and a back-end bespangled with mud-sequins, all in one fluid motion. 

BONUS TIP: Coincidentally, that brown stripe up your back will look a little like a fluid motion. As though you squirm through the sewers like a Ninja Turtle. That would be athletic, even daring. But is it Cycle-Chic?

Tip 83: Spit on yourself

The biology of saliva, phlegm and snot is clear to cyclists: Cycling makes them happen. (Tips et al, Nature, Vol 12, pp.1264-1289, 2011)
The physics are a whole nother matter. Generations of cyclists remain mystified by why - when you spit out into all that fast moving air - it is so rarely whisked away, and so often splattered all over you.

BONUS TIP: The sociology of phlegm splatter could be a whole journal.
When you stop to buy coffee and don't know you have spit all over you, it's ok. Post-ride, when you realise you have been riding for team snot-rocket, emotion surges through you.

Tip 75: Put your lights in your pockets

Forget the effect on your slinky silhouette, you can't leave those Knogs on the bike. 
You're going to have to put them in your pockets or they'll be gone before you're down the block.  Jam them in there with your phone and wallet, and if it looks like your pants have the mumps, so be it

BONUS TIP:  If they accidentally turn on later when you're on the dance-floor, it will look like there's a whole other disco going on in your pants. Can that be a bad thing?

Tip 63: Sweat

Park your bike and ride the lift up without changing your clothes.
You feel warm but tell yourself you are socially acceptable.  That sprint over the last two kilometres is forgotten.
Inside your climate-controlled office, you swifly turn red and sex-like.  Your shirt sticks to your spine, your face feels hot and your lips are salty.

BONUS TIP: When you go to the morning meeting, put on your jacket to hide the dramatic armpit stains from the women in marketing.  
Soon your entire body is clammy like a diptheria patient.  Before its your turn to speak, your eyebrows will fill with drips that fall on and ruin the notes for your presentation.

Tip 56: iPhone and ride

When the phone pings in the pocket of your Rapha shants, you can try to let it sit.
But the amount of time that messages sits unread, the more its potential importance grows. 
A callback on that audition?
An article published in that zine?
A game of dungeons and dragons about to start?
While you've got your phone out, well, you could easily check your tweets on this long straight stretch.  And look, your nemesis has taken their turn in Words With Friends.

BONUS TIP: Of course, you are aware of the tremendous risk inherent in doing this:  You could drop your phone on the road and end up with spider-web screen. 

Tip 46: Panniers

Get the leather ones with tassels. Wear spurs and a large-brimmed hat that can trail behind you when you go fast.
Refer to your bike as a steed, chew tobacco and carry a revolver. Cars won't mess with you. No-one will.

BONUS TIP: Ride a tall bike, and measure its height in "hands". Refer to the guys you ride with as a posse. Start a brawl in a saloon. Fill your panniers with beef jerky. Yee-hah!

Tip 33: Rapha

Look at me.

La di da.

Rapha cycling wear

BONUS TIP:  Oooh la la