For decades bike gangs have earned a pretty bad reputation due to their over-representation in such antisocial areas as drugs, violence and stand-over tactics. Now before you get the idea that this post is about the US Postal Team of a decade ago (which, true, I did contemplate), let me stop you in your Harley Davidson Fatboy tracks. Because, no. I actually want to sing the praises of bike gangs, albeit of the bicycle variety.

Anyone who rides on a regular basis will understand what I mean. Whether you call it a bunch, a peloton or a plain old group, we are a gang of bikers. And whilst we don’t generally engage in nefarious extra-curricular activities (unless you count the occasional traffic misdemeanour and instance of public urination), we do share a common bond, a brotherhood if you like.

You won’t find a Sergeant-at-Arms as such, but you will most certainly find hard nuts who are the keepers of the ‘rules’. Roll out of line and you’ll quickly learn who they are.

Whilst generally more sanitised than the outlaw motorbike variety, there are also often peculiar initiations; used like figurative boom-gates to the inner circle. One of the most popular includes body shaving.

There are uniforms or ‘colours’ that separate rival gangs of course. And, yes, they’re often black.

Each bunch typically has its own patch of turf, which is often fiercely protected, especially when it involves criterium racing against other gangs.

There is also a strange, coded street language largely indecipherable to outsiders, involving acronyms like SRAM, Di2 and KOM, and random words of continental origin such as kermesse, soigneur and peloton.

And while they may not involve hidden drug laboratories, members of our gangs frequently devote entire rooms of their houses to a vast array of paraphernalia and equipment, drawing endless suspicion from outsiders.

Yes, we have far more in common with our outlawed two-wheeled cousins than we may first realise. Of course, while both see its devotees out on the streets with the wind in their faces, bicycle gangs do differ in one significant way to bikie gangs.

Our choice tends to keep us out of trouble, while theirs, well, doesn’t.