The idea of canoeing the Cuyahoga River from Kent to the Cleveland Flats came to me, as most of my truly stupendous ideas do, after a night of what some call binge drinking. I call it relaxing.

While smoking a cigarette on the bench just below the waterfall, it struck me that it was possible to travel the Cuyahoga from the Kent bars to the Winking Lizard in Peninsula, and then on to the Flats ­ one big bar-hopping boat sprawl. The idea took up residence in my head, and by the end of summer, it had become an obsession.

At my second home, The Loft, I told people about my plans. The most often heard comment was, "That's crazy. That's up river." This is a common misconception.

Cuyahoga is the American Indian word for "crooked waters," an observation the area's first inhabitants made while using the river for transportation. The river begins 18 miles northeast of Kent at the confluence of two creeks near the tiny town of Welschfield. After running south through Lake Rockwell and Kent, it flows west through Munroe Falls and Cuyahoga Falls. Skirting the north part of Akron and running through the Gorge Metro Park, it turns north, snaking its way through the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, Brecksville, Garfield Heights and eventually dumping into Lake Erie in the Flats.

I found my co-captain in Jonathan "J." Fox, friend and bartender of four years. Everyone I told about the trip thought I was nuts, save for J. I told him my plan, and after slight hesitation, he looked up from the pint he was pouring me and said, "I'll go."

Neither of us is an experienced canoeist. Between the two of us, we had roughly 30-day trips under our belts. Neither of us is a bastion of health, either. Both of us smoke, drink lots of beer and eat entirely too much red meat to be considered healthy. As a matter of fact, for the length of time I've known J., we've seen each other outside The Loft only about 10 times.

It took the rest of the summer to find a cheap canoe for the trip. We had to be fully prepared to destroy or abandon our vessel. Knowing this left renting, borrowing or buying a nice canoe out of the question. In late August, with fall semester a week away and my dream of urban adventure fleeting, J. found a canoe.

The morning of Aug. 24, we loaded up our coffee mugs and headed out to Winham. After a bit of fumbling around on the back-country roads, we found her ­ 16 feet of oxidized aluminum full of water and green fungus. She had patches on both sides of her hull bigger than my boot and silicone and fiberglass patches peeling off her bottom.

For the next week, J. and I worked on making the canoe seaworthy. We scraped and sanded, removing the old silicone and Bondo that was chipping away. We resealed the cracks, applying new Bondo and silicone in excessive amounts.

On Labor Day, we took our canoe, now christened das Trinker, to Lake Hodgson for a test run. We paddled around the lake long enough to drink a couple of beers. Seeing no water seeping through the hull, we deemed das Trinker worthy of the trip and painted her black. That night we finalized our plans and began rounding up people for the support team. We would make the run on Sept. 6 and 7.

Our support team was to meet us at predetermined check points along the river in case of emergency and with extra supplies. They were to help with the portage around Cuyahoga Falls, bring our camping gear to the Winking Lizard and pick us up in the Flats. Between check points, J. and I would be at the mercy of the river and each other.

On the night of Sept. 5, J. and I met with the support team to give them the weekend itinerary, complete with estimated arrival times and hand-drawn maps. The plan was to be on the river at 8 a.m. the next morning. With minor work to finish on the canoe, J. was to be at my house by 6 a.m. to help with repairs.

Over our last beer that night, J. and I made a serious pact. We knew there was some danger involved, even though we looked at the trip as a lazy, beer guzzling float down the Cuyahoga. We agreed, quite seriously, to keep our wits about us.

J. arrived at 7:48 a.m., right on schedule, as I was duct-taping the seats to the boat. By 9 a.m., we lugged our gear, boat and hangovers to the waterfall in downtown Kent. Excitement and apprehension rolled around in my stomach as it did when I was a little boy getting on my first full-size roller coaster. We were in for a ride for sure, but this one had no emergency stop button.

Not 10 minutes after shoving off, we hit a submerged rock that almost flipped us. The rock jarred the memory of the previous night's pact back into our heads. We looked at each other, and without words, we knew we had to be more careful.

As we floated toward Stow, the Cuyahoga was teeming with life. Turtles and frogs jumped into the river from sun-baked logs, startled by our approach. We saw fish beneath us and hundreds of birds inhabiting the banks. A blue heron would become our spirit guide for the trip. We called him "Duck" in honor of the blue plastic duck we found, left over from the Kent Heritage Festival's duck race.

About a mile from our first portage, around the waterfall in Munroe Falls, J. and I had our first encounter with two factors unaccounted for when planning the trip: The wind and the slow to no current of the river. We fought to keep the bow pointed directly into the wind while navigating through someone's backyard water ski slalom course. The wind tried to turn us sideways and blow us back, wasting valuable time and energy. Initially thinking the river's current would drag us along, we were stuck with the fact that the Cuyahoga, for the most part is a slow moving river.

J. and I were tired when we met the support team to portage around Cuyahoga Falls and Gorge Metro Park. We were an hour late, and the team looked ragged. We loaded up the car for the portage, stopped at Wendy's for lunch, and then went to Babb Run Park to get back on the river. J. and I requested the support team to bring us a 12-pack of beer, ice and smoking supplies to our 6 p.m. checkpoint at the Winking Lizard.

After carrying the canoe and gear a half-mile down hill, and after a run-in with a huge snake on the river bank, we were back on the river at 2 p.m.

Here, we began to notice that most of the Cuyahoga River is only a couple feet deep. Pebbled shoals forced us to get out of the canoe and walk as we dragged the boat. We were taking a chance of ripping patches off the hull on the rocks, but we didn't care. The boat was too heavy, and, at this point, we were both exhausted and secretly wanted das Trinker to sink.

During this leg of the trip, we noticed there were no more turtles or frogs, and the only fish we saw were an occasional school of minnows and carp. A minnow actually jumped into our boat at one point, trying to escape a famished carp.

We met up with a curious beaver that dived into the water as we approached. He swam alongside us, seemingly trying to figure out just what the hell we were doing. We were beginning to wonder ourselves, as exhaustion set in, and garbage cluttered the banks.

For the next five miles, the water was putrid brown silt floated downstream. It was kicked up from a bulldozer we passed that padded the bank of a golf course. I wondered how much aquatic life was suffocating in the once sacred river.

About 3:30 p.m., and safely in the Cuyahoga Valley, we tied up to a fallen tree in the river and relaxed with a few beers, trying to kill off the sharp pain in our upper backs.

J. laughed and said, "Look at this cesspool."

"No shit, man! This is disgusting," I replied while looking at the river.

"No," J. said, "I meant the boat."

There was garbage all over the banks and garbage floating past us. Just past Akron, we began seeing more tires than birds. In one spot, hundreds of green, plastic soda bottles piled up in a logjam like some trashy Christmas tree. We even found an inflatable love doll. We were going to strap it on our bow as a figurehead before we decided it was probably used.

We made it to the Winking Lizard at about 7:30 p.m. We looked horrible. I told our support team we were exhausted, but they thought we were drunk. We were so exhausted we did not even set foot in the Winking Lizard, when the original plan called for us to stop in for a couple of shots.

At 8 p.m., with the sun sinking, we had a few miles to cover before we could make our guerrilla campsite. We got hung up on a rock in a fast-moving rapid leaving Peninsula and once again almost flipped. The canoe was now 100 pounds heavier with camping gear and riding much lower in the water. The most trying part of the trip was ahead of us, canoeing in the dark with the reflection of the moon on the water as our only navigation tool.

We paddled for more than 2 1/2 hours, navigating the most treacherous rapids of the trip in the dark. We almost flipped four more times. A flip would have left us with a wet tent and sleeping bags, and quite possibly facing hypothermia with no way out of the valley.

About a mile North of Interstate 271, we camped on a flat spot on the West bank, happy to be alive without serious injuries and relatively dry. By midnight, we had eaten, had a couple of beers and were sound asleep. About 4 a.m., I awoke to the sound of driving rain, lay there for a minute or two, figuring out where I was and why I was sleeping next to J. Then I thought about the canoe. We had pulled it all the way out of the river before we went to sleep, but if the river rose a couple of inches, there was the possibility that it would wash away.

I woke up J.

Hey, man it's raining," I said with worry in my voice.

"Yeah. So what?" said J. from his sleep-slogged mind.

What about the canoe?" I asked.

"I'm not going out there," stammered J.

I wasn't too keen on leaving my dry bed either, so we went back to sleep.

In the morning, J. got out of the tent and said, "Damn it! It's still here."

Later that day, he admitted he hoped the rain would wash das Trinker away so our self-inflicted torture would end.

We were back on the river at 9 a.m., both let down and relieved to see that the largest rapids were behind us. We were empowered by our conquering the river at night. After working out the kinks in our backs, we found a stride in our strokes, not hinted at the day before. Our minds grew stronger as our muscles grew weaker.

After a portage in Independence which had us sliding das Trinker down a 25-foot cliff, we were on the last leg of the trip and would not see the support team until we reached the Flats. Das Trinker had a slow leak, and we stopped to bail her out three times before we finished the trip.

By 3 p.m., it was obvious we were in Cleveland. The water turned a darker brown and smelled otherworldly. Sounds of traffic were audible from the sheltered riverbed. Just before we reached the industrial district in Cleveland, we saw two fishermen putting a boat in the river.

I yelled over to them, "How much farther to the Flats?"

"About four miles," the older man responded. "Where did you guys put in at?"

"Kent."

He yelled back, "Holy shit! Kent! You guys are crazy!"

By this time we knew it.

J and I celebrated by cracking open some cold ones.

Just before we saw the first factory on the river, Duck left us to finish the trip on our own. Before he turned back, he dropped a feather in front of the boat. I picked it up and put it in my hat.

By 4:30 p.m., with factories looming all around us and freighters with anchors that dwarfed our vessel, we noticed a group of boys playing on a wooded bank on the opposite side of the river. I looked over and saw one of them down on one knee furiously pumping a rifle. Then he took aim and we put our backs into our strokes. They fired five shots off our port side before we were completely out of range.

Finally, Jacobs Field and Terminal Tower came into view. We screamed with joy and began pounding beers. We had a leisurely mile to go, and we took our time, talking to a rowing team and stopping to talk to firemen on a fireboat. They too thought we were crazy.

The sun was setting as we paddled past Nautica Stage, where Jewel played. J. recognized one of the security guards from The Loft.

Where the hell did you guys come from?" the guard asked.

"Kent," J. said.

"Why?"

"We were bored," I said.

"What're ya goin' up river for?" he asked.

We waved goodbye without comment and paddled to our take-out point just before Shooters on the West bank of the Flats. The support team cheered for us as we rounded the bend. My mom and dad stood on the boardwalk smiling, glad we survived.

After unloading, we made a beeline for the closest outdoor bar, where my father and brother-in-law bought us celebratory shots and beers and my mother gave us pain killers. J. and I could barely even stand.

Looking back on the trip with a pinched nerve in my neck and itchy poison-something-or-other on my ankles, I wonder why we did it. A month after the trip, J. and I are still licking our wounds and looking for free massages. It was a gruelling 53-mile trek taken with abandon. We had no idea what we would have to put into the trip, physically, mentally and spiritually.

"We got at each other's throat,"J. said after the trip, "but we never killed each other."

For the majority of the trip, J. and I didn't speak. We were in tune with each other and the river. We saw the same things, felt the same things and thought the same things. We grew spiritually in our silence. There were trying moments, and both of us desperately wanted to quit many times during our 23 hours on the Cuyahoga. The reason we didn't was because we never talked about it. Even though it was in our heads, we knew it was not an option. We had something to prove to ourselves, even if it was just proving how stubborn we could be.

We got to see this part of Ohio in a way few people ever will, but why did we do it? I guess we just needed to get out of the bar, and the river was there.

"It was the most grueling thing I've ever done," J. said, reflecting, "but when we were done, it was the best thing I ever felt."

I have not seen J. outside The Loft since the trip.