On June 25, 1982, the young, promising poet Peter Seegers died in an accident on Mont Ventoux. Thirty years later, his five best friends, four men and a woman, return to Provence. AndrÔe has had a career as a high-class coke dealer. Joost is a physicist and winner of the Spinoza Prize, but he is accused of fraud. The Achterhoek Surinamese David owns an adventure travel agency, crime journalist Bart is working on a book about Spinoza and cycling. Laura, who disappeared without a trace after Peter's death, turns out to be a stage director in Arezzo. What happened thirty years ago? Can you negate choices? What does time do? What is the time? Can love break a close friendship? Can you blame fate? What else do you have to do when you approach fifty? Why are they going back? And furthermore: is it wise to clean your bicycle chain with petroleum, what should you think about when you drive up in the Forest, string theory makes you happy, what did the actress Dominique Sanda have with Friedrich Nietzsche and what does Caffße San Marco in Trieste look like? Does life ever turn out well? On stretches of new asphalt, all you could hear was the hum of the tires, a sound that usually evokes bliss in me, but which now caused a sense of loss. We didn't speak, except for a few warnings to other traffic. Four men, and we cycled. Nowhere is the feeling of friendship and loyalty as strong as with a group of men on bicycles. You look out for each other, the strongest does the most work and put the others out of the wind. You touch a back as you pass, like a short caress. You feel the concentration, the attempt to become one cycling animal, one body, one mind.