The call came from Pickwick Dam, Tenn.

I'll admit, I hadn't heard of the place.

Michael "Tug" Buse was on the line, checking in at the 1,200-mile mark of the solo journey he's making from Sioux City to Maine. He expects to cover 4,000 miles in 14 months, spending all of it rowing, sailing or cruising in a 14-foot wooden boat he made in Sioux City.

The Washington native resided in Sioux City the past five years and built the boat when he wasn't in a Morningside College classroom, working as a communications professor.

Buse, 31, put his career on hold to answer the ocean's call. He's been on the water in his boat, Adventure, for 2 1/2 months. He's spent 1 1/2 months sleeping at night on the boat, anchoring it near dikes and sandbars on the Missouri River, the Ohio River, the Tennessee River and now the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which he's taking south to the Mobile River.

In a couple of weeks, he'll enter the Gulf of Mexico and sail east to Florida.

The Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was completed in 1984 ago as an alternative to the Mississippi River for commercial boat traffic. The trouble? "Most commercial traffic stayed on the Mississippi River," Buse said.

The Tenn-Tom Waterway, as it's called, morphed into a route used by pleasure boaters and adventurers like Buse. Marinas popped up along its shores. The system, which cost $2 billion to construct, connects Sunbelt states with 14 river systems in the eastern U.S.

It came as a pleasant surprise to Buse, who learned at rustic Hoppie's Marina of Kimmswick, Mo., that he'd better not take the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. It's a direct route, sure, but not user-friendly. Not for a tiny, transient craft like Adventure.

"Hoppie's Marina Service consists of a bunch of surplus, old metal barges tied together on the river," Buse said. "They have fuel and a toilet there, not a whole lot of services."

What Hoppie's does offer is smarts, river expertise shared by Fern Hopkins daily in an afternoon lecture. Buse learned that in 1,000 miles of the Mississippi River from Hoppie's to New Orleans, there are two marinas. One isn't recommended.

Buse took the advice, made his way southeast to Cairo, Ill., where he took the Ohio River to Paducah, Kent.

Buse's concern involved power. That changed when his 2-horsepower German motor malfunctioned, forcing him to upgrade to a 4-horse gas unit that allows Adventure to move against the current.

"I didn't think I'd have the power to get up the Ohio or the Tennessee," Buse said. "But a delivery captain profession who delivers yachts and pleasure boats said my motor would make it as there isn't much current."

The drawback? Buse isn't rowing as much as planned. He has yet to sail.

At Paducah, Buse entered the Tennessee River and is now taking the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway south -- with the current -- through Alabama to Mobile. He plans to hit the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile by mid-November.

Lowlights? Buse rode out a severe storm on the Mississippi River in Alexander County, Ill. He spent the night pumping water out of the boat and slept sitting up in his rain gear, finally nodding off at 3 a.m. as the storm passed.

"This has also been one of the coldest, wettest falls that people in the mid-South can remember," he said. "Leave it to me to pick the freak year."

After enduring a teeth-chattering two nights where temps dipped below freezing, Buse found a store in Memphis and traded up.

"I got a sleeping bag that's twice as thick as the one I had," he said.