Early Earth Grant Goes Through

Much to Dean Owelle's disbelief, we finally won the grant for researching early earth. It took a while but the grant money came through. Someone at NSF is very generous towards the bird community. Not that we are arrogant, but we anticipated that the grant would go through, so we started building the time machine back in the fall. The preparations all took place in the basement area of Flockhart Academy.

Within the bellows of his basement laboratory, professor Lark outfitted a space shuttle (generously donated by NASA) with time travelling equipment. After a few upgrades the shuttle is all set to go. The basic time travel equipment utilized by the shuttle was already field-tested by yours truly. Back in 2007, I used a time-travelling watch to visit Dimitri Mendeleev and Sir Isaac Newton. After working out the kinks we installed a similar contraption on the shuttle. We pilot-tested the shuttle last week, going back a few decades to watch a Beatles' concert. It was a wild scene. Predictably, the tricky part was figuring out where to land.

Although Owelle has some concerns about budgetary issues, the grant funding should cover most of the expenses. Another serious concern is disrupting the space-time continuum, but I figure hey, what's the worse that can happen. I'm leaving all that to Lark to figure out.

Our crew for the first mission is nearly assembled. Jaykes, Gina, myself, Norman, and Lark will round out the central crew. By a stroke of luck we managed to recruit captain pelican, who has flown on previous shuttle missions and is the only one who has a clue about how to land the blasted thing. We invited Owelle to come along but he has insisted on staying back to run Flockhart and find out leave replacements. I tried to explain to him that given the fact that we are time travelling, we can simply return a few seconds after we leave. He remains skeptical and to the best of my knowledge stared hiring leave replacements yesterday.

More on this as it develops!