Tip 118: Be a paragon of virtue

Never ever overtake on the left.  Signal each manouevre.  Announce you're passing.  Pump your tires.  Shoal nobody. Look both ways at cross streets even when you have right of way. Stop to help people with punctures.
Inspire your fellow riders to exalted displays of refined behaviour with a messianic display of flawlessness. Never rest.

BONUS TIP: If you collect a bunch of 12 guys you love to ride with, and they take your word as gospel, and then you all go out for one last supper, and one of them gives you a kiss, it would be safe to be worried about your immediate future.

Tip 112: Divide people into "tribes"

Plucked, vacant leg follicles?  file under R for Roadie
Ankle in the gap between the rolled up chinos and the brogues, where sock ought to be? File under H for Hipster.
Strappy high heels and calf tone to spare? Under C for cyle chicstress.
Filthy Vans and vast expanses of visible boxer short? B for BMX bandit.
A grown man riding a second hand mountain bike in workman's clothes? Look away.

BONUS TIP: Send your boy for another gin and tonic while you work on your treatise - a complete anthropology of cycling tribes, coming out under Pith Helmet Publishing this spring.

Tip 111: Get your smug on

Pass a guy, who can't be more than 21, wearing a tie, in a BMW, stuck in traffic, and just try to not get your smug on.
You can't help it.  As you blast by his 318i the look of self-satisfaction spreads over your face like a "One Less Car sticker" spreads over the top tube of a second-hand Repco.

BONUS TIP: As they say, silent smugness is wasted smugness. But shouting at SUV drivers is déclassé and lecturing your friends is so undergraduate.
Express your smugness clearly but quietly - carry your helmet with you all day, leave your right pant leg rolled, or wear spit all over your shoulder and a big smile.

Tip 103: Creative ways to entertain with Salmon!

With summer coming on, it's time to think about entertaining.  To make sure what you serve up is what everyone is talking about, take the time to do a little more with your Salmon this summer.  Here are a few tips:

Smoked Salmon: Ride a bike the wrong way up a street while under the influence of the weed.

Tinned Salmon: Ride a bike the wrong way up a street while wearing a suit of armour.

Salmon Roe: Ride the wrong way up Saville Row.   

Blini: Ride the wrong way up a street while covered in sour cream and riding a small flat bike made of buckwheat.  (Buckwheat recumbents are the latest in bamboo bike technology: likely to be hot this summer, but stale shortly thereafter).

BONUS TIP:

Salmon Mousse: if you really want to make an event to remember, trap a bull moose, tame and saddle it before riding it up a one way street in Alaska.

Tip 99: Regret being so cool

How does it feel to be cool? You can't sit around and talk about it.
It's not something you get asked to reflect on in interviews, like being formula one champion.  Noone asks about the gruelling training regime or whether your parents supported you all the way.
You even have to deny it.
"Fucking hipsters," you might say.
Take off your Ray Bans, run your hands through your quiff and lock eyes with your interlocutor to make a searingly honest confession: "I'm a nerd, really."

BONUS TIP: Give up trying to be cool and strike out on your own.  Sell your fixie and burn your desert boots. You could take up long-boarding, for example. I hear that's popular right now.

Tip 96: Lingo

Clothing you would previously have "worn" should now be rocked, as should gear you may once have merely "used."
Remember, the first guy in the group to refer to his bike as a whip seemed like more of a douche than the last one.  If everyone else is using language that seems way too cool, you can too.

BONUS TIP: If you want the bros to think you're tight, saddle up, hipster.  Jargon binds groups.  Don't go wondering if abandoning your integrity is "right".  Thinking like that will make you the weird one nobody feels like talking to.

Tip 95: Decide whether you are avid or keen.

On first encounters, cyclists appear like a unified front.
After a while, you will notice a distinction. Some people describe themselves as avid cyclists, others as keen cyclists. This is the secret language of a fault line that divides cycling as sharply as a Japanese knife.
Like the jets and the sharks, the crips and the bloods, or the Capulets and Montagues, these groups have stalked each other since the P-far first rolled. If it is a history rarely spoken of that is because the tales that comprise it are too bitter: families rent asunder, blood spilled, lives wasted.

BONUS TIIP: If you are under 30, or have tattoos, you may also elect to join one of two dangerous splinter groups, extreme cyclists, and hardcore cyclists. But if you do, you better watch your back. That's all.

Tip 92: Spot a celebrity on a bike

Is that Rove Mc-freaking-Manus? Cool! Wait. What is he riding? A Huffy? I can't believe I thought he was cool.

BONUS TIP: Tell the story like this: "Guess what. I saw a poorly maintained huffy out on the street this morning.... And who was riding it? None other than Rove Mc-freaking-Manus! I know! What a dork!"

Tip 87: Ride with no hands

A few things your 14 year old self was proficient at adult you cannot do.
Eating whole packets of skittles is one of them, as is wagging class and having faith in the political system.
In this illustrious company is riding with no hands.
14-year old you depended on this daring display to compensate for the total absence of other ways to impress the opposite sex, as well as to facilitate eating skittles while riding.
The adult cyclist clings to the bars like their jobs, superannuation and home-owning aspirations depend on it.

BONUS TIP: No hands riding is like baking a diamond into your Christmas pudding. You might break a tooth, but you'll feel so much richer.

Tip 81: Talk Bike

Being a cyclist is joining a secret society.  A link exists from you to every cyclist you see on the roads.
This is how that link is exercised:

• Ask them how their ride was;
• Tell them about the one dickhead driver that came out of nowhere;
• Listen to them complain about the noise their chain makes;
• Remark on this lovely weather.

BONUS TIP: Contemplate this: can an edifice of profundity be made from bricks of inanity?