Robert Fuller, living with cancer, thumbed his nose at life's curveballs and canoed 1,503 miles from Dahlonega to the Gulf of Mexico -- and back again. Fuller needed five months and one sturdy canoe to travel down the Chattahoochee River, paddle to Mobile, Ala., and then head upstream to Dahlonega. Part scientific mission, part personal quest, it was "the trip of a lifetime."