Tip 119: Crane your neck.

If your saddle is higher than your handlebars - and you have little chance of becoming the object of a wistful missed connections entry if it isn't - you know neck strain.
On the long trip from your basement "loft" to attend class, pull espressos or occupy wherever, you will become a sort of super yogi, capable of holding a tendon- tearing position for hours on end.
The alternative, of being hypnotised by a spinning front wheel, is a pretty good way of testing the strength of your front wheel compared to the panel on the passenger door of a turning car.

BONUS TIP: Ride far enough like that and as you walk down the street, you will appear to forever be contemplating the clouds, unable to lower your eyes to human level. You need to swap to an upright dutch bike when the missed connections entries start overwhelmingly coming from your BFFs / parents/ housemates.

Tip 108: Learn something

Ignorance is bliss. The flipside is that learning can be quite painful, like using your finger as a front derailleur.
You can learn something new from bike shop guy, like how there's this new kind of bottom bracket that makes everything prior seem to have the weight of lead and strength of paper mâché.
You can learn something new from Sheldon Brown, like how proper chain maintenance is as simple and accessible as ascending K2. ;)
You can learn something from someone you meet on your ride, like the many benefits of gloves.
Lastly, you can learn from a process of trial and error, but the terminology is quite misleading.  It should be trials and errors. No-one learns properly the first time.

BONUS TIP: Lessons learned this last way will send you on the long ride to being a better cyclist, but not until you've stopped in for a hot steaming cup of my-bike-my-gear-and-my-technique-all-suck at Cafe Doubt & Despondency.

Tip 107: Pedal squares

Regular quadrilaterals got a bad name until concerned hipsters mounted a thankless campaign to rehabilitate their image: sporting square-frame spectacles; rocking checked shirts; and promoting suffocating conformity.
Newly endorsed by the cool set, your defective pedalling technique will no longer be a source of derisive glances, but of seething envy.

BONUS TIP: When everyone's buying up John Lennon glasses and tie dye, you will know it is time to research  how to "introduce power tangentially to your pedal action." Until then, just have the phrase on hand so you are ready to appear avant-garde.

Tip 90: Ride on holiday.

If you want to take a rapid descent from cycle-chic to cycle-freak, pick up a hire-bicycle on holiday.
Take one aluminium bicycle with components from the Shimano Cacophony range, add one jet-lagged out-of towner, throw a Lonely Planet into the front basket and immediately start going in the wrong direction.

BONUS TIP: From Ballarat to Boise, locals are in awe of how the tourist cyclist enjoys their merry japes - despite bike handling skills and route selection that would immediately mark citizens for the red squidgy death.

Tip 64: Take the lane!

And then bore the whole fucking universe to death with your bullshit manifesto.

BONUS TIP: Like whiskey for breakfast or farting in a lift sometimes taking the lane is a tremendous response to a tricky situation. Doesn't make it any sort of basis for a radical ideology though.

Tip 53: Increase your cadence

It should feel like your feet are comets bending space time with an unbelievably fast orbit of the planet Crank. Your legs will warm up from air friction rather than effort.

BONUS TIP: If you're going to spin so fast you bounce in the saddle, you may want to remove any genital piercings. Or not - up to you!