Nothing screams ‘midlife crisis‘ like an overwhelming desire to buy a sports car and jump from a moving aeroplane…..not as a literal sequence obviously.
Who, apart from James Bond, drives a sports car out of a perfectly good plane at 10,000 feet?
Perhaps it’s the thrill of cheating death, perhaps it’s proof that age is no barrier, perhaps it’s to prove that you’ve still got it, doing something as seemingly insane as travelling higher than even birds dare to go and jumping into midair even though you don’t have wings is a hugely popular activity.
These days there are thousands of locations promising the very best of adrenalin pumping, life affirming Sky-diving packages that are suitable for almost everyone.
Sky-diving for newbies comes in three forms.
Tandem, where you are strapped onto another person and they control the action.
Static line, which looks like the old army style you’ve seen in movies where the parachute automatically opens as you leave the plane.
And accelerated free fall, where you receive a lot of training beforehand and free fall from the plane for a while, deploying the chute by yourself when the time is right.
Tandem is the most popular way to sky-dive for people who just want to do it once and cross it off the list. It doesn’t take a lot of instruction, and is as stress free as dropping like a rock from the sky to the earth can be.
Of course, there are some practical rules about this sport that are worth noting.
Firstly, people who are heavier than 110kg, or 235 pounds will not be able to jump in most places, unless they can prove that they are in excellent shape (think representative rugby player level, not weekend warrior fitness level).
The reason for this restriction is as much about the landing as the fall.
Heavy things land hard. If you weigh more than 100 kg, and the person you are strapped to doesn’t, and you land badly, not only will you be hurt, the tandem instructor runs a very serious risk of injury also.
If most of your bulk is muscle and you have a toned physique, you will be far better off even if you do land with a thump because, basically, you are harder to kill.
Also, there is up to a 30 degree difference in the temperature from when you leave the plane to when you land, so if you are prone to asthma or other repertory issues, you might need to really think this over. Your lungs are going to be under pressure anyway because your heart will be pounding like Keith Moons arms after he’d popped a Beni, so sending freezing air into them at speed is not going to make for comfortable breathing.
And speaking of your heart, let’s be honest. Sky-diving is not like yoga. Expect to be scared, expect to be highly charged, expect that if you have a weak heart, you may actually make it explode.
Not many people die from heart attacks during sky-diving, but that is because it is in the interest of companies who offer them for you not to die. If you think you are being tricky and not disclosing your prior heart condition, landing hard on your butt will be the very least of your problems.
Having said all that, there are thousands of people of all ages jumping from planes. It’s a thing.
Welsh charity fund raiser Dilys Price STARTED sky-diving at 54, and now, at 83 jumps out of planes with almost monotonous regularity. People as old as 101 have jumped out of planes and lived to tell the tale. Really, anyone in good health can do it.
So the next question is where? If you are only going to do this once, where do you want the video to be located?
There are so many spectacular spots to choose from worldwide that it’s hard to narrow it down but here are three locations that look amazing to us.
If you’ve jumped from a plane, let us know how it went. Was it everything you’d hoped? Was it worth the money? Would you do it again? Contact us here
#SKYDIVING #ACTIVITIES
