Hi folks - quick introduction, I'm from London, UK and I'm 50 years old, married with two youngish children. I've done some pretty crazy stuff in the past - I raced motorcycles with moderate success for 10 years. I gave that up after the third time I broke my leg, and have been racing cars (Caterhams) ever since (with much less success!) I've always wanted to do a parachute jump, but never got around to it. For my 50th birthday, I decided it was about time and booked a tandem jump. You can guess the result of that... So I booked AFF level 1, but (1) my instructor wasn't happy with my ability to hold an arch, and (2) I wasn't happy with the amount or quality of instruction. The DZ had screwed up the bookings, and our "6 hours of training" turned into a quick 5 minutes now and then when someone was available. So by mutual consent I did another tandem, but with an altimeter and with the tandem instructor taking me through the AFF moves. Now I'm out in California for business, and I just had to do the 18,000 tandem jump at Monterey Bay. Twice. Since I'm out here quite often, I thought maybe I could do the full AFF course here. No problem, they said, so long as you're under 40. 40??? Come on guys, under 50 would have disqualified me, but I could have understood it. But 40 seems ridiculous. Is it just that the sport's so full of youngsters that 40 seems ancient? I also did a windtunnel "skydive" here, and to be honest I struggled a bit. I found it hard to keep a strong arch and stable position. Any advice for someone in my position? Perhaps I should mention that I broke both shoulder blades in the bike racing years as well, which means my shoulder muscles are much weaker than they otherwise might be.
