WATERLOO -- Author Dennis Weidemann figures just about everyone has an adventure spinning around in their head -- a horseback ride in the Rockies, backpacking through Europe or a cross-country road trip through small-town America.

For most folks, those gutsy excursions remain a fantasy, tucked away under life's "What if" category. But in 1979, the Iowa native and three friends broke the mold, completing a 1,400-mile canoe paddle from the lakes of Minnesota to Canada's Hudson Bay. Weidemann's memories of the adventure -- and his musings on its meaning -- are recounted in "This Water Goes North."

"Back then, we just thought it was a great way to spend the summer," said Weidemann, who will discuss his book Thursday at the Waterloo Public Library. "As we got older, though, I think we all realized this was a big thing for us, a life-changing journey."

Weidemann had just turned 21 when he set off on the voyage with three co-workers from Happy Joe's Pizza & Ice Cream Parlor in Ames. The guys wore Converse canvas tennis shoes, and each packed seven pairs of socks figuring that at any time during the two-and-a-half-month excursion "two (would) be dirty, two wet, two on the feet, and one lost," he wrote.

"We didn't have much money, and we didn't have the best gear, to say the least," said Weidemann, now 51.

But perhaps against the odds, Weidemann and his crew completed the trek. They rode rapids, pushed through back-wrenching portages and even rubbed shoulders with a polar bear in the Canadian wilds. A diet of mashed potatoes, macaroni, rice and fresh fish -- with a healthy helping of youthful exuberance -- sustained the gang from start to finish.

"It's a great story and people are looking for great stories," said Amy Heth, of the Waterloo Public Library. "These boys were not prepared for the journey that they embarked on, which makes it all the more cooler, actually."

On some nights, the men made camp with fellow travelers or local residents, but for much of the journey they were alone in the wilderness.

"We learned that there was another way to live," said Hank Kohler, the trip's mastermind who now owns the Happy Joe's in Ames, and also previously worked as an assistant manager at a Happy Joe's in Waterloo. "You started to think only about finding a place to sleep and food to eat. It was very freeing."

Weidemann, who spent most of his childhood in Waterloo before graduating from high school in La Porte City, sometimes shakes his head in disbelief as he recalls details of the trip.

"I think overall we were a cross between Lewis and Clark and Abbott and Costello," said the author, who now makes his home in Wisconsin. "We had adventures, but we went to have fun. We wanted to see the world, and to me, that's why you go on a trip.

"You don't do it just to track the miles," he added. "It's what happens between point A and point B that matters."