In the end, as often happens, people find themselves around a table, among good friends, to share a passion: and if it's cycling, even better.

Clearly, if the meeting place is the Bulleri butcher & bistro in Peccioli, well, you're on the safe side and in front of a beautiful Florentine steak, conviviality becomes brotherhood. For a few hours, you eat and drink, savor and enjoy: you tell stories. The stories become more precise and daring as the hours pass and the bottles are opened: with each toast, the mind becomes clearer, speech more fluid, and joy is the soundtrack of an evening among good friends, who from tomorrow to next Thursday - with the Tuscany and Sabatini Gran Premio Città di Peccioli - will stage a new chapter of their two-wheeled novel.

A Florentine steak in the province of Pisa, in Peccioli to be precise. The appointment is at Bulleri butcher & bistro, to plan work, to sip ideas, to ruminate on the past, to toast what will come. Hosting the evening is the president of Pecciolese Luca Di Sandro. With him, the society's secretary Gianluca Merlini and a large group of sports directors, race directors, and key figures in cycling. Glasses raised, as are hearts. For a cycling evening with an ancient flavor: today, it's increasingly rare and difficult to find the time and availability to organize this type of evening, unless you're near Peccioli, in the area of Bulleri butcher & bistro.

In the opening photo by Fabio Rodella, from left to right, Dario Cataldo (XDS Astana), Maximilian Sciandri (Movistar), Leonardo Piepoli (Movistar trainer), Mayor Renzo Macelloni, Cofidis doctor Dario Spinelli, race director Lucia Noletti, Pecciolese Cycling Union president Luca Di Sandro, secretary Gianluca Merlini, Bruno Cenghialta (XDS Astana), Claudio Cozzi (Tudor), Roberto Damiani (Cofidis), Vittorio Algeri (Jayco AlUla), race director Marco Casino, Valerio Piva (Jayco AlUla) and Stefano Zanatta (Polti Visit Malta).