Dave Gibson "Daddy Never Was The Cadillac Kind" .mov 

i loved that song. i heard it first under the confederate railroad flag. it only proves a difficult concept that the civil war was not that civil and it still rages on. the north was a perceived winner. general robert e lee and general Ulysses s grant. signed a cease fire and a armistice . they concluded that it was to much a waste of time and human life to go on and it was estimated it could have gone another couple of weeks. but at what cost more lives and heartbreak of family left behind. i think that the north required unconditional surrender. grant and lee were cadets both from west point military upstate new york along the (henry) hudson river that a sully sulenburger the fighter pilot turned commerical air line pilot and on the day of a miracle on the hudson. sully with the help of crew and the hand of god took a flying twin engine wide body plane through a flock of birds (geese or other bird brains) took 2 major bird strikes that killed two turbo fan jet engines. (for those new to the airline industry. air line look at airworthiness is established that if one engine fails to run. the aircraft must be able to make a landing site safely.) the jet plane went from a twin engine running plane to a glider that the jet plane was not designed to be. sully took his combat flight experience and made some critical decisions to land the glider as safe as he could. he had a certain altitude with a potential energy that had to be consumed cautiously because when spent it would be gone and no way to regain unless an engine restarted. sulley had to guess where he could land safely. his best guess or his intuition was the hudson river. a kid sized balsa wood glider can. but a bird the size of a jumbo sized multi ton plane maybe not so much but i never was a fly boy or fly person or a fly on the wall. with the help of god and angels enough things went right that the jumbo glided and skimmed the water to a safe stop. that was one mile marker. a jumbo jat with 2 massive turbo fan radial jet engine. turned into a glider that landed safely on the hudon river. but it was a plane and designed to be a boat. time to safely evacuate the plane on water without folks who could walk on water. the flight attendants used their evacuation training and the passengers were instructed to do wing walking and leave the plane on to a wing and with a prayer boats will arrive and retrieve the wing walkers on a water craft and back to dry land. it was never practiced or planned but with the grace of god a slew of good happenings happened. now that the glider was acting as a water craft. sully went from airline pilot to a river boat pilot. same craft same pilot same man different factors impacting as a responsible pilot. now sully was a captain of a plane that morphed into a boat. he knew would float for a bit but how long? that american airliner was nothing like a submarine. not even the beatles yellow submarine nor was it a subway submarine sandwich. as a navy captain he evacuated women and children first. it did not matter on the wing were men women and children and crew. sully did a post flight checklist to go through the cabin area to see no living creature was left behind sully would have been surprised if he found a mouse. i don't think or stink so. and any rats deserted the sinking ships into new york harbor seashore. anyways sully put on a santa claus cap on and checked the cabin compartment twice to see if scared passengers were hiding in or under the seats. fortunately no creatures were stirring not even a church mouse. the coast was clear. now captain sully did his sea captain job and all passengers of the ship was evacuated. than meant sully could abandon ship. and he put his pilot wings and checked to see all passengers were accounted for on dry land. again he put his santa claus cap on and checked the list twice to see that all passengers were accounted for and as safe as can be. next he had to check on his flight crew from the cock pit. then all the stewards, stewardess and all in flight attendants were accounted for. yes they were. then he thanked god and then the entire flight crew for helping turning a potentially disastrous flight into a flight that was successful. a successful flight is a flight with all passengers safe and sound on the ground. and in the event that god took experimental hot air balloon pilot brian jeffery boland to heaven an accident or an act of god. a traumatic story. brian was taking a family of 4 for a hot air balloon flight or one helluva ride of a lifetime for 4 passengers and a hot air balloon pilot of 50 years of flight and 72 years of life on earth. it was an ill fated flight like the titanic. it was a routine flight similar to the comedy of the ss minnow on Gilligan's island. there was the skipper played by brian and the first mate was brian in a younger day like his first years of flight. brian wore the headgear like donald Sutherland wore in the role of oddball in the classic kelly's heroes. brian always had a out side of the box way of doing things. like the dusty rusty museum of stuff or his movable pens for the chinese motorcycles that he had to order to get the franchise agreement to sell chinese motor scooter. the business never took off..... back to sully i think. sully thanked the team noting it was act of bird brains in a bird strike to make a routine flight an adventure of life time. the only major source was god yet the whole crew had a part of seeing it through a fairly fairy tale ending no fatalities. and the follow-up investigation was a bigger nightmare than the aborted flight.