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 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 44: Get yelled at by a limo driver

"Get out of my lane, you dumb effing racial epithet!"  That's the line that will cut you like hot wire, and leave you composing stinging comebacks in your head for three days. Starting, of course, at the exact time the limo goes out of earshot.

BONUS TIP: In a million twisted revenge scenarios you will never consider this: that limo driver is stuck in traffic while you roam the city free.

Tip 17: Get Gloves

Scene: You, hands in pockets, waiting at lights on a Very Frosty morning.

Fully Kitted Middle-Aged Man who rolls up behind you: Cold hands eh?

You: Hm?

FKMAM: I see you have cold hands!

Y: Oh. Yeah. It is a bit cold!

FKMAM: I don't know how you do it without gloves!

Y: I've been meaning to get some. Mumble.

FKMAM: I ride so much, I've got three pairs, thin, medium and these ones.  I look out the window each morning and decide which ones to wear.

Y: Really?

FKMAM: It's also good if you fall off cause otherwise you'll take all the skin off your palms.

Y: Oh yes.

FKMAM: You should get some.

Y: Sure.

FKMAM: Promise me you really will.  It sounds like you're just saying you will.

Y: *watching desperately for light to change*  OK, OK!

BONUS TIP:  You are going try to burn off FKMAM when the light goes green. Do not fall. Your pride can't take it.