Tip 79: Veer into a parked car

Cycling affords a tremendous way to see your city and it would be a shame not to stop and smell the roses.
If you peer off into the distance long enough, however, you will cease to hold your line.  Perfectly stationary objects will jump out at you, and you will find the end of your handlebar has become irredeemably tangled with a parked car.

BONUS TIP: Hold your head high, as though mortifying embarrassment is as preposterous a concept as Scientology, put the car's wing mirror back in place and ride on.

Tip 78: Get merged on.

In the big game of Quidditch that is urban cycling, Malfoy-esque motorists throw Harry Potter invisibility cloaks onto anything that doesn't have four wheels.
You might be the nimblest Seeker Hogwarts has ever seen, but when those big metal beaters we call cars unexpectedly join you in your lane, you will consider hopping off your broomstick.

BONUS TIP: When you catch the death-eating car driver at the next intersection, let loose with
a few of your most powerful curses.

Tip 76: Make someone go "woah"

Many people think a bicycle is like a merry-go-round horse: great fun but not much chop for travel. 
Arrange to meet one of them somewhere far away. Rock in wearing jeans and a knit, and hang your helmet on the back of the chair.
They'll go: "Wait. You *rode* here? woah!"

BONUS TIP: At the end of the event you will have to defend yourself from many offers of putting your bike in a car and being driven somewhere. 
Your duties are two-fold. First, decline all offers, feigning indifference to the weather's inclemency. Second, do not crash on the way home. 

Tip 63: Sweat

Park your bike and ride the lift up without changing your clothes.
You feel warm but tell yourself you are socially acceptable.  That sprint over the last two kilometres is forgotten.
Inside your climate-controlled office, you swifly turn red and sex-like.  Your shirt sticks to your spine, your face feels hot and your lips are salty.

BONUS TIP: When you go to the morning meeting, put on your jacket to hide the dramatic armpit stains from the women in marketing.  
Soon your entire body is clammy like a diptheria patient.  Before its your turn to speak, your eyebrows will fill with drips that fall on and ruin the notes for your presentation.

Tip 52: Go by car

All good cross training involves something that will stress different muscles while putting pressure on your cardio-vascular system.
I recommend Punt Rd traffic.
Your heart rate will soar like a 12 per cent climb, and your fellow traffic-makers will see you engage in serious verbal gymnastics as you seek out the one foulest word that encapsulates your feelings for them.

BONUS TIP:
Deploy a variety of obscenities to work on your lip and tongue muscles - if everyone in your way is just a "fuck-wit", you're not going to get that all-over-toned look that really shows off your mouth.

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 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 2: Move through stopped cars at intersections

Cycling is a healthy pursuit, and nothing ruins it like sucking on the exhaust of a queue of cheap cars from a time before emissions standards.
The only place to be at an intersection is at the very front, where (if you don't glance in your helment mirror) the cars are hidden from your hawkish gaze.
There may be times you are discouraged. There may be times the traffic is packed tighter than a pannier on the way home from the farmers market.  There may be times you are riding a Dutch bike with handlebars like the wing span of a Hercules C-130.  Do not back down.
The car drivers won't mind.  They are in their warmth capsules only because they crave to be cradled and swaddled as they never were by their mothers.  If, in making your way to a front-of-grid position, you are visible, at their wing mirror, pressed bodily against their tinted window, they will appreciate the human presence they are so starved of, however fleeting it may appear.

BONUS TIP: Pros can take on this mini-labyrinth even as the lights on the cross street turn yellow.