Four veteran male bicycling buddies decide to take on The Death Ride, a one-day bike ride near Lake Tahoe in California. Training over the various popular roads of the San Francisco Bay Area, they encounter steep climbs, bad weather, vexatious wives, flirtatious female bikers, hot tubs and road rash before setting off for the Sierra Nevada hamlet of Markleeville and the single day 129-mile ordeal. Separate chapters are dedicated to various San Francisco Bay Area road climbs: Tunitas Creek, Old La Honda, Kings Mountain, Sierra, Mount Hamilton, Mount Diablo and several others, including the history behind each. Interweaving their lives and loves, the group, now expanded to eight, eventually saddle up before dawn on the second Saturday in July to join 3,000 other riders starting the day's journey of 129 miles over 5 mountain passes, each rising over 8,000 feet.