Start Looking for Those Messages in a Bottle...

While the family might look like they're up to no good in this photo, they're actually getting ready to launch a science experiment. As soon as Jimmy realized that someday we might take a ferry to England, we started saving champagne bottles (as you can guess, I didn't complain about my participation in this part of the project). Once we booked our tickets, he and the girls started getting serious about how best to do this. They ended up with 11 bottles each containing a letter of introduction with Jimmy's permanent e-mail address, a map showing the approx drop point per his GPS, a Dutch stamp, a Dutch coin and a rock from North Carolina. The tops have a cork, epoxy, wire and aluminum foil in an attempt to keep them watertight for years to come.