Longtime readers might remember our experiment with messages in bottles.
To summarize: we filled two plastic bottles with two messages and dropped them in the Ottawa River. One of which was actually found. In hindsight we should have known that the Island Park bridge – although pretty – was not the best place to do this because the river gets strained of debris at Domtar in Gatineau. It was a neat experiment, even despite the short distance our bottle had travelled.
Anyway, I might get flack for this (someone had taken issue with our polluting the river with plastic bottles) but I wanted to post about a new message-delivery system we tried out yesterday … tying messages to balloons.
We had extra balloons floating around from Sarah’s birthday party last week (YES, that is how long they’ve lasted) and instead of having them die a slow death we decided to do a little experiment.
The girls each wrote a short message (which included our family email address) and put them in lightweight sandwich bags which we stapled it to a shortened string. And then we got ready to let them go.
We went outside and bid a fond farewell.
Here’s where we learned a useful lesson about wind. It can snatch your balloon and send it drifting into the waiting arms of the nearest tree.
And guess what, it’s still there!
We are hoping that someday the tree will release the message.
Sarah went inside and wrote another one, tied it up, and sent it flying. Happily it seemed to clear the neighborhood trees. (Although it looked iffy for a few moments.) Phew.
Both balloons were heading eastward. So if you’re in West Wellington or Hintonburg (or maybe as far as Gatineau again!), please drop us a line if you find them. :)
