Tip 105: Fox your bike mechanic

If you're waiting by the phone like some lovelorn 14 year old with a head full of ideas best left in songs by the Cure, and you're breathing deep sighs, and your mechanic never rings and then it's past shop closing hours and the phone rings out and you know there's a reason you couldn't fix that weird noise yourself and you are shaking with worry for your bike - that's when you know what love is.
Try to face the idea that you might lose each other. 
Cry, write some poems and draw a charcoal sketch of the wide open road to remind yourself of the good times you shared.

BONUS TIP: Then spend about six hours online considering a new bike.

Tip 94: Delay essential maintenance

After a while you think of that funny noise as good company, like the footfalls of a troupe of Hobbits with whom you are merrily crossing the Shire, drinking wine from flagons.

BONUS TIP:  It's procrastination.  If you only ever ride to the bar to meet hot ladies, smoke a pipe and eat goulash while throwing darts, bicycle maintenance will continue to run a distant second.
Schedule a trip to your financial adviser.
(Or - if the reason you can spend all day at the bar is that your financial affairs are in order - to your dentist).

Tip 88: Change into your easiest gear

Putting it in the granny gear on a hill is like visting a dangerous third world city and spending the day in your five-star hotel room.
It's easy! It's pleasant! So stress free! I feel like I'm wasting my life!

BONUS TIP: Many of God's lightning bolts are aimed at lower-end Shimano derailleurs, at the moment the user goes to shift back up. 
The unfortunate mortal is then stuck riding around town with their legs spinning like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character just before they shoot off in a cloud of dust.

Tip 41: Accept a compliment

Cycling's not all muscular agony and festering, road silt-infested wounds.
One day you'll show someone how to use their bell, or how to stop that brake from rubbing, or even something as tricky as where a good bike path is, and they will fawn all over you, touch your on the arm, take your photo, tweet how awesome you are, facebook-friend you and nominate you to the local paper in their Suburban Heroes section.

BONUS TIP: Do not try to say it was nothing. Tomorrow at work your boss will probably fire you for coming up with an efficiency improvement that could make the company millions.  Take the good while you can.

Tip 39: Put up your seat

Proof weight goes straight to your behind?  The mass there is stretching the space-time continuum so that the longest one centimetre in the world is that one centimetre too far you put your seat up.

Your taint is screaming for mercy, your pedal stroke is as efficient as a burger-flipper on Oxycontin, and if that truck pulls left you will turn to strawberry jam, because you damn sure can't reach them brakes.

BONUS TIP: At that altitude, air is thin, and you may have a vision of the vast Allen key forest.  Climb down.