A classified ad in 1979 built a 46-year friendship

Joel Greenia found his cross-country biking partner the way you did things in 1979. He placed a classified ad. Another young man from upstate New York, Ray Halbert, answered it, and that summer the two flew from Buffalo to California and rode 3,485 miles from Santa Cruz to Hartford, Connecticut, over 57 days. They slept on park benches. Police once pulled them over. Somewhere along the way Greenia decided to propose to the woman he has now been married to for 46 years. Then they got home, took jobs, and lost touch for more than four decades. Last year Halbert planned a California trip, tracked Greenia down online, and mailed him a handwritten card. This July, at ages that make classified ads feel far away, they rode again, from Detroit through Ontario to the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, where they first met. Their wives dropped them off at the start.