Would you like to go out (and by that I mean up) with me?

My first date with my husband was a flight in a small airplane, out of a grass airstrip in Knoxville, Tennessee. Well, perhaps it wasn't a date, since my brother and sister came along, too, but in my mind, if you can remember exactly what you were wearing 28 years later (a dark blue Miss Piggy T-shirt and denim shorts) and how long you stood in the doorway of your house looking after the car that just drove away, it's a date.

Maybe that's why I like the idea of Crystal Flight, 50 airplane sculptures placed in and around Crystal City, in Arlington, Va. near National Airport. Here's a photo album of the planes in the studio before they were placed in the community. I wonder where the couple in the pink car/plane are going for their night out?

And here's one with a giant Kong hand grabbing a vintage plane. (This didn't happen on our date.)

It's a promotional site for Crystal City, of course, but at the Crystal Flight Blog, you can download a map of the 4.5 mile long flight path, which pinpoints the locations of all 50 planes. I'm going to have to go check out several of these. "Plane Jane" is apparently a black-and-white stitched riff on the Mary Jane shoe, a joke that women get, but that makes men go huh? (I wore tennis shoes on my date.)

As for the airplane sculpture named "SuperFly," please, please, please be a uber-cool, mirrored sunglasses-wearing, science-fiction reading giant housefly/F-22. According to Wikipedia, there's an opera premiering in Paris this year based on 1986 film version of The Fly. Who knew? Honey, wanna jet to France for a date?

P.S. More pictures in the photo gallery that accompanies this Air & Space magazine article.