N is for Nose

It had been a long night. The storm had been an intense one, but Maru had stayed over and had kept the potbelly stove in Blade's hangar a glow all evening. The two vehicles spent the evening chatting and sipping coffee…well Blade had been sipping coffee and while pointedly ignoring that Maru kept on topping off his mug with high grade…until they eventually dozed off.

Now the light outside was brilliant hinting at the world now covered with a fresh coat of ice and snow. Yawning, Blade stretched and nudged Maru to wake him. Given the angle of the light streaming through the window, he suspected that Cabbie had already completed breakfast preparation and was waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive so that everyone could eat.

Neither vehicle spoke as they rolled off their sleeping mat and for the door. Neither needed to. The two vehicles had been friends long enough that they practically knew what the other person was thinking about. Blade reached the hangar door first. He paused, steeling himself for the rush of cold air he knew was about to hit him. Then moved to nose the door open...but the door didn't budge.

Blade tried to nose the door open once again, only to find that the door refused to even move an inch. By this time, Maru had arrived at the door and the mechanic bent his tine to the task, only to discover that the door was stubbornly refusing to open. It was then that the tug let out a long string of swear words as he realized that that the storm must have frozen the door shut.

"Cabbie?" Blade finally called over the radio once he and Maru had tried to find an alternative way out his hangar, only to discover that every single door and window was sealed shut with ice.

"Ah, I was wondering when you two would finally wake." The old plane replied with a level of chipperness that only proved to deepen the two trapped vehicles' frustration.

"We are trapped." Blade shot back.

"Not too surprising?" Cabbie replied, with slight pauses that seemed to indicate that the plane was happily eating breakfast while his colleagues were trapped only a few hundred feet away.

"Cabbie…" The Chief's tone was dangerous, but Cabbie appeared to be immune to the icy tone, and the sound of the old plane's laughter echoed across the radio waves. "This isn't funny."

"I agree with you on that." Cabbie's voice was filled with mirth. "But there is nothing we can do about it at the moment."

"So, you are not going to coming to rescue us?" Maru snipped.

"Would love to." The old plane replied. "But we happened to be hit by a couple of bands of freezing rain last night and my hangar doors are as frozen as yours is." Cabbie paused as though to take a long sip of coffee. "Luckily it looks like the weather will be warming up this afternoon. So all we have to do is sit tight for a couple of hours and allow the ice to melt."

It wasn't an ideal solution to the problem, but it looked like it was their only option. Which meant that Blade and Maru resigned themselves for the long wait. Maru put on a pot of coffee, and it was only then that the two vehicles realized the true horror of their current predicament for while they had access to caffeine, Blade's hangar was completely devoid of food.

Both Blade and Maru were adults. They were perfectly capable of skipping a couple of meals…in fact, both of them had forgotten to eat numerous meals because they had gotten distracted with work, but with the endless empty hours stretching out before them, the hunger bubbling up in their tanks proved to be utterly distracting.

They tried to read, they tried to play games, they tried to have a conversation, but regardless of what they tried, their brains always circled back to food. By the time the sun started to cast long evening shadows, Blade and Maru were creating menu after menu with each being more elaborate than past. They were kind of convinced that they were starting to go a little mad when there was the sound of crunching tires outside and Cabbie forced the hangar door open.

"So, who's hungry for some chili?" The old bird asked.

Neither Blade nor Maru bothered to respond. They just shot out of the hangar and down the tarmac to the warmth of Cabbie's hangar. Blade paused for a moment at the doorway and took in the smell of freshly baked rolls and warm spices. Maru simply pushed past him and started to pull out the bowls. The whole crew ate in silence until all three vehicle's tanks were comfortably full before they relaxed enough to laugh at the day's misadventure. That said, they had all learned their lessons, and next year, Blade, Cabbie, and Maru made sure that all their winter hangars were well stocked with emergency snacks.

Term – Nose – An aircraft (or watercraft or ultra-highspeed land vehicles) is a tapered structure on the front of the vehicle that helps it be more aerodynamic. The nose is usually conical in shape and is often filled with important equipment such as radar, sonar, temperature, and pressure gauges.