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The cold front is finally rolling through. The fog was as thick as clam chowder this morning and the rain has been coming down intermittently this evening, just enough to dampen the ground and let up again. I haven’t had the air conditioning on in the house for probably the last three weeks, just subsisting on open windows and ceiling fans (I’m really not picky about temperature–anywhere from 65° to 85° and I’m fine). It does get warm in the house in the evenings, though, so a cool evening outside makes for a more pleasant climate inside. As I search for a job to try to stabilize that part of my life, the atmosphere in the house reminds me of what I do have–a roof over me, a car that gets me from point A to point B, a vision of and movement toward a possible future, food in the pantry and fridge and people that I love on the other end of the telephone line.

I was supposed to fly this morning but the fog was prohibitive. Mr. Parrish gave a lesson on ground reference maneuvers, which I’ve already done, and I washed one of the Skyhawks. Not the whole thing–that’s a once-a-month ordeal–but just the leading edges of the wings and struts and the windows. It’s uniquely tactile experience. The ability to see out the airplane’s windows without fogging or distortion is key to being able to spot airborne traffic, so there are specific procedures and substances used to clean them. Actually washing the windows is a task performed with plain water and my hand (no rag or cloth) to eliminate any possibility of chemical reaction or scratching. Also, the cleaning pattern must be in the direction of the airflow, or along the long axis of the airplane. So in terms of learning about an object and even experiencing a sense of closeness to it through my sense of touch, the process of washing the airplane is fairly well tailor-made.

The experience of washing and detailing a car is similar in that I learn a lot about the intricacies of its lines and intersections and materials through physical contact, but I think the sense is even more pronounced with an airplane. The reason I think has to do with the underlying functionality of surfaces with which I’m in contact. On a car, 90% of the contours probably serve no other purpose besides pure style. Granted, the body does have to enclose the mechanical organs and the passengers and provide the structure to hold everything together, but by and large style plays the predominant role. On an airplane, style does play a certain role (the swept tail of a 172, for example, is functionally inferior to an unswept one, but Cessna wanted the airplane to look more modern and rakish), but function is always the overwhelming concern. Running my hand along the wing’s leading edge after cleaning knowing that it is part of the structure that holds the airplane in the air, feeling the spanwise depression under the front portion of the airfoil, letting my fingers oscillate over the rivets knowing each one connects to a structural spar underneath, curling my hand around the fairings and fillets that reduce interference drag, sensing through my fingertips the inherent lightness of the aluminum skin (so different from the thick steel shell of a car)–all these things create a connection between man and machine that’s hard to express. I found phrases and fragments of sentences coming to mind as I stepped back and took in the whole of the airplane. I don’t know if I could arrange them into anything, though. But suffice it to say the morning was not wasted by not flying.