FLAGLER BEACH, Fla. - It didn't make it across the Atlantic, but 7-year-old Dylan Goodman got a long-distance answer to a message put in a bottle that was thrown in the ocean.



His floating note sent March 4 said: "Hi. My name is Dylan. I'm 7 years old and if you find this message, please write back."


A surprising reply, postmarked in Jork, Germany, several weeks later, had the first-grader, his family and friends wondering how the bottle could have made the 4,637-mile journey.


What the message didn't say was that the bottle made only a short trip.


"I found the bottle in Flagler Beach," explained Sybille Lohse, who answered the youngster's note.


"We stay seven months in Germany, five months in Flagler Beach," she said. "I found the bottle in the middle of March. We go back to Germany end of March."


The reality was disappointing to Dylan's mom, Kelly Goodman.


"In a way, I wish we never knew that," she said Saturday. "But I guess the mystery is solved. It was kind of bizarre that it would get there that quickly."


Goodman said Dylan and his sister Megan, 10, had each tossed a bottle out to sea on the morning of Megan's birthday. It was something she had done as a child and she thought it would be fun for the kids.




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Kind of a sweet story

I sent a message in a balloon once. Never got an answer