Tip 115: Wear a helmet inside

You may *know* you look dorky but subconsciously, you've forgotten. Otherwise you wouldn't have walked in wearing that stupid plastic hat.

No matter what claims are made about the charms of helmets - when you step off the bike, hotness rushes out like air from a thumb-tacked tire.

BONUS TIP: If you thought a Mohawk, a skinhead or a hijab were socially divisive, try wearing a helmet into a hipster bar.  Some tattooed douchebag will start up the helmet debate, and there'll be blood all over the ironic decor before you're able to leave.

Tip 69: Take your bike on a train

You'll be popular as a subway rat - and twice as nervous - as you ride the escalator and try not to let your big steel frame run down the masses.
Squeeze into the carriage and manouevre to that one spot where you're not blocking either door, then hold onto the ceiling with your outstretched fingertips.
BONUS TIP: Keep your helmet on until you get to your station. Those dirty glares could turn to violence any moment.

Tip 23: Footsoldier in the helmet war

Like the British Empire at its glorious, tea-stained peak, the sun never sets on the helmet war.
In the trenches of a comment section somewhere, ranks of libertarians aim their vitriol guns at an endless column of muddy volunteers willing to die for head-protection.
Get in there. Doesn't matter what side.  Pick your weapon.
If you like the wind in your hair, assert that helmets are ineffective in the same serious crashes that are most likely to hurt heads.
If you like the nylon strap under your chin, you should load up the anecdote cannon  ("My dad cracked his helmet in February '85 and he says it saved his life.")
Aim to kill, and remember, war is hell.

BONUS TIP: No battle in the great helmet war can be said to have really begun until one group of cyclists wishes death on the other. Drop that bomb early.

Tip 22: Hang your helmet on your handlebars

The first people to dangle stack-hats from their Oury-brand grips were a small group of History Professors.
They had read how Hernan Cortes, on arriving in Mexico, had his men burn the boats they  arrived in.  Removing the safety net meant his soldiers would brook no retreat. 
These wise professors saw a parallel in cycling.
Perhaps it could be made safer in a counter-intuitive way.  Your head, they reasoned, is the soliders and your helmet the boats, with their false promise of security.
(Of course, your handlebars are the flames and the road an angry phalanx of Aztec warriors).
Around the holly-oaked lanes of Oxford, untold dozens of injuries to some of the most valuable heads in academe were avoided through this time tested logic.

BONUS TIP:  One unpropitious spring day a history professor revealed the helmet strategy (and its historical antecedent) to some Business school faculty over scones at College. 
The Business School professors started spruiking the historical lesson in their flimsy best-sellers on the strategy of business and copied the helmet routine to boot.
The only time Oxbridge neurology wards got any work was when a business professor and a history professor both rounded a corner in the gloaming, and collided.
The boat burning strategy can't work if both sides do it.