Tip 71: Make a weird noise

When a taxi door swings out at you in traffic you probably imagine you'll say something sharp, like 'Watch out fuck head!' Or something clever, like 'Are you inviting me in?' as you narrowly sweep past.
Most likely though, you'll say 'aannnfgghrr' and ride away feeling like you just emulated a mating baboon.

BONUS TIP: Do not succumb to the temptation to elaborate the baboon impression. Do not throw faeces. Neither should you rub your swollen red behind on their passenger window at the next traffic light.

Tip 59: Have your bike stolen

If your love is taken from you too soon - in the phase where you lock up both wheels and fall asleep with it in your arms- when you return to the lamp post and find your D-lock in twain you are likely to fill a page with florid despairing verse and fling yourself from the roof of a Ray's Bikes outlet.
Later, you pass full days without even thinking about the machine you swore devotion to. At this stage, if the shadow-dwelling hacksaw man absconds with your ride, you won't be half way through the cab trip home before thinking about what you'll replace it with.

BONUS TIP: Tell yourself you'll buy a cheap commuter you can afford to have taken. Once in the bike shop, you'll wonder if you can afford not to get a SRAM red set up.

Tip 45: Struggle to get in your pedals

When there is nobody behind you, your pedal is the right way up and you clip in first time.
The number of full loop-the-loops your pedal will do before you get your foot in is directly proportional to the number of intimidating looking people behind you at the light.

BONUS TIP: You laugh at those on platform pedals, and they laugh right back, knowing any efficiency you thought you might gain through these devices is officially lost at every traffic light.

Tip 43: Get lied to in a bikeshop

Because the bikeshop has worked its vaporising magic on your critical capacity, it will feel fine - better than fine.
It will feel like you are garnering essential truths from a grease-stained guru.

Bikeshop Guy tells you that small bottle of chain lube is cheap at $24.99, it is cheap.
Bikeshop Guy tells you the new year's models of Treks are no good,  they are no good.
Bikeshop Guy tells you you are mad to run Ultegra, you are mad to run Ultegra.
Bikeshop Guy is a thin, earnest, bearded version of Big Brother.

BONUS TIP: Try not to make important life decisions in a bike shop.

Tip 42: Get mud up your back

It's the tramp stamp of 2011.

BONUS TIP: But it washes off in time for 2012.  Fenders are going to rock 2012 so hard 2012 will be in a rocking chair by the time 2013 comes around.

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.

Tip 36: Obsess over your route.

Optimise Y

where Y 

= a*(smooth surfaces + efficient hypotenuses)

+

 b*(bikepaths)*(sneaky shortcuts)

- 

c*(drunk pedestrians + slippery tramtracks)

+ 

d*(long fast downhills / steep sweaty uphills)

-

e*(taxis + cops + beer can-throwing SUV drivers + holier-than-thou vehicular cyclists)^2

+ 

f*(people to admire your style / avoiding that cafe where the cute waitress saw you fall off that time) 

-

h*(Red lights + puddles)

BONUS TIP: If maths is not your thing:  Optimal route-finding is a personal expression of the discourse between the cultural, politico-infrastructural and the physical. Discuss.

Tip 35: Pop a yoghurt

When that taxi changes lane and forces you into the gutter, your lunch, prepared this morning before dawn and stowed in your back basket, suffers from the rumbles of the cobbles.

Your apple bruises, your banana splits and your yoghurt explodes like Mt Vesuvius, spreading through your neatly folded work-wear, a fact to which you are none the wiser as you give the taxi driver a complete sign language alphabet full of gesticulations.

BONUS TIP: You will be cranky from having no lunch and are sporting dubious proteiny stains on your clothes. It goes without saying - avoid your boss.

Tip 34: Ride with flat tires

Top track athletes train with tractor tires tied around their waists. Top archers shoot with their eyes closed. Top swimmers do laps with a brick in their speedos. You ride with flat tires.

BONUS TIP:  Refuse offers of pumps. Smile when they say you're crazy - it will make veins stand out in their foreheads.

Tip 28: Stop in front of someone

Who's this douche-bag? Is that a dutch bike?  With flat tires? 
I reckon I can take him when this light turns green.  
I'll just stop here in the pedestrian crossing so I can take off first. 
Now, let me check my facebook.  What? No new notifications?  Maybe I'd be more popular if I got a new bike? Would that make a difference? It's probably my haircut.
Maybe I'll post about getting rid of this fringe. Could I go for a an undercut? maybe a mohawk, or would that look silly with this moustache? 
Wha? 
Why is the douche-bag overtaking me?  
Oh ... green light ... 

BONUS TIP: Ignore the death-stare when you stop in front of him at the next intersection.

Tip 27: Ride a bike that's too big

The gorgeous woman struts across the restaurant, all eyes on her. She doesn't know she is trailing a long strand of toilet paper from under her little black dress.
It flutters behind, getting caught around other diners' chair-legs as she lives in the moment.

So it is with a rider on a too-large frame. 

You are simply delighted to be riding with the wind in your hair.
Sure, you feel the strain in your triceps as you reach for the brakes. And you are mightily aware that top tube will make you a eunuch if you slide forward off that saddle. 
You don't know you look like a 16 year old who got a birthday present to grow into, and you won't really care until that mortifying moment someone tells you.

BONUS TIP: After you get your bike fitted properly, spend several happy years snarkily pointing out ill-fitting bikes all over town.

Tip 24: Comment on BikeSnob

You've perused the back catalogue and you read religiously.
You know a collabo from a colourway and were recently delighted to learn how hipsters are just mulch.  You venerate the man and his helper monkey, Vito.
It's time to step up and comment. If you're Pacific-Occidental, like this blog, the only way to compete for a podium position is to be up and on the internet at some weird time.  Even then, without a sharp trigger finger, you could easily be squeezed off the top ten.
No. For you, a well considered comment in the top 50 is the goal. Rake through the pile of leaves in your brain, looking for a thought not yet withered and autumnal. Add snark, and set to!

Bonus Tip: The true goal is to make it into a post.  Try taking a video of a hipster beating on a cop whose car is blocking a bike lane.

Tip 21: Get overtaken by a faster cyclist

Getting overtaken is like milk - it comes in two forms. One cold and easy to digest, the other lumpy, sour and makes you choke.

Type 1 is over before it began. Before you know a blur in your peripheral vision resolves into a lycra clad ghost that disappears over the horizon. You barely have time to register a pair of tightly defined calves moving like hairless metronomes before they're gone.

Type 2 is slow. The sound of grinding gears approaches. There is breathing. You may speed up, to discourage a pass, you may slow down to expedite it.  It matters not.  After what seems like forever, the (slightly) faster cyclist takes their chance and moves ahead, torso twisting violently as they push their plastic pedals, sweat evident on their brow.  

They make slow progress on increasing the gap, leaving you to catalogue a million reasons you aren't going fast today.

BONUS TIP: Of course you can remind yourself it's not a race. But you'll gain about as much satisfaction as from tickling yourself.

Tip 18: Watch the Tour

Watching someone else pee is inconsiderate.
Watching other people copulate is considered immoral and watching motorsport is evidence of cerebral insufficiency.
Watching cycling is, however, quite refined, like eating a gel made by dissolving a pearl in the blood of Johnny Hoogerland. Talk about it and people will nod knowingly.

BONUS TIP: Staying up late and snuggling into the couch will yield few improvements to your pedalling technique, but that chocolate spread is gonna get finished, no matter what you tell yourself.

Tip 15: Coast

A crazy idea has infiltrated cycling. The idea the most "zen" thing you can do on a bicycle is allow a mechanical contraption to force your legs to go round.
No, fixie crews. No.
Uh-uh.
You want to know what part of cycling is most like the z-word (derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state".)
Coasting.
There's a bit of magic in being still while going fast.
Humans have always envied birds their swooping freedom. When you coast, you own that freedom.

BONUS TIP: You may have to concede coasting delivers very little meditation or freedom on the uphills.

Tip 14: Hit a taxi, then take a detour

Ride down a hill and through an intersection, fast. Weave out to dodge the car in the bike lane. Weave back in to dodge the traffic, which is slowing.
Get on your brakes, as a taxi slows more than expected.  Get off the brakes because your wheels are about to lock up.
Moment of panic.
Hit the back of the taxi.
Thunk.
No damage. Peer in and see no sign passenger or driver is even aware of what you've done. Continue up the bike lane.  Consider looking over your shoulder. Instead take the next left and next right, to lose them.

BONUS TIP: Take three to four days of shame, guilt and trying not to think about it before you can tell this story to anyone.

Tip 12: Mount your bell and lights on the bottom of your handlebars

Global overpopulation is the inevitable endgame of this species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens.  A species so wise it invented redundancy.  Real estate grows scarcer, and it seems ever less likely the innovation-bots at a thousand Googles could save us from the impending Malthusian crush. 
You can help.  There's real estate out there just waiting to be claimed.  Take your bell, your light and your trip computer, and flip 'em.
Magic.  All that space you never knew you had, right there on the most crowded part of your bike.  Sprawl all over that newly exposed bar tape like a new suburb consuming subdivided farmland. Luxuriate a liitle.
You can even try out new hand positions.  Narrow accentuates the cleavage, while the off-symmetrical tweaks those neck muscles ruined playing too much angry birds. 

BONUS TIP: Plant your hands extra wide and feel the rushing air dry your armpits before you arrive in the office.

Tip 11: Leave your bike

There's something totally charming about leaving your bike in a public place, say, outside work, and seeing it there each time you go past.
It's there when you go out for coffee, marking that patch of pavement as yours.  It's there when you head to your afternoon meeting. 
It's there when you walk in from the train station the next day and it's there for the rest of the week until this "awful weather" passes. You're like a tomcat who has marked the territory, and you can hold your tail high.
You don't need to worry about bike theft as much as you think.  They call it passive surveillance - the way a bike parked in a busy street won't be molested, for the most surprisingly long time, except by spiders.

BONUS TIP:  That story about the guy who had a nest of white tails in his seat, and they crawled into his bib shorts on a long descent and he got flesh-eating necrosis of the balls? True story. Happened to my cousin's friend. He's OK now but says always use mortein on your saddle before a ride.

Tip 10: Ride in a pack

The group ride is back. Bunch up like a pair of target undies and get out there.
You're like a fish in a school, like a duck in a flying V. 
 Unless you're some sort of book-reading libertarian or bearded librarian, the presence of your fellow humans will fill you with something. Something we've almost forgotten in this world of morning meetings, double monitors and Swiss-made swivel chairs  - emotion. 
The primordial soup that makes up your brain will release a feeling like a caveman pursuing a buffalo alongside his grimy, hairy cousins, and you may let loose a roar.

BONUS TIP: Once you've built up a bit of speed, endless LOLs can be obtained by gently rubbing your front tire on your peleton-mate's rear tire.