mdbambi

there are so-called "youth-protecting-laws" in Germany and, where I come from, in Austria. in Germany they may not sell beer or wine to youth younger than 16 except they are together with adults, e.g. in a restaurant, the other alcoholics not under 18, no matter if it´s in the supermarket or in the bar. in Austria it´s similar 16 or 18 dependant on the different parts of Austria. problem is that law differs to things done in reality. nobody really asks kids about their age when they fetch beer from the supermarket. they recently testet this for a consumer-magazin, only 20 % refused to sell "alcopops" to a 13-year old boy.

hi, deb! welcome back to "skydiving family" who is certainly not putting pressure on you-maybe that compensates the other pressure. wish you good luck and success at your aff, but especially much fun in spite of the pressure you´re putting on yourself by doing it secretely. my familiy also doesn´t accept me jumping out of planes or helicopter (although I´ve only done tandems ´til now ... but that´s another story...); my son even mocks at my addiction whenever I look up to the sky. btw: what do you mean with "playing with the grandchilds" in your profil? blue skies martina

hi, beth so you are the next who´s hooked! as I feel the same way and have the same problem, I can understand what you wrote about. I´m also addicted since I had my first tandem zwo years ago; but there are two boys at home wanting their mum spend her time with them, and, besides, a full-time job during the week; so absolutely lack of money and time. I try to handle it like this: twice a year a tandem, meanwhile reading books about skydiving (so sometimes I´m glad I need not know all the stuff because I only have to trust my TM) and spending time on reading here in the dropzone.com, always finding s.o. who shares my problem (of not skydiving yet). and I just hope that somewhen when my children won´t need me any longer, when they don´t want to go on holidays with their mother, I´ll catch it all up and begin an AFF. so hold on and just you wait! and I wonder who of us will be the first... greetings from Austria md

hi, mark! nice to read sg. from one who is same age as me, because reading in the forums makes me think skydiving´s just a sport for students and other very young people - and those who are elder have plenty years of experience. i started with tamdems two years ago (unfortunately stook by that until now), and i remember that i had no fear at all. it never occured to me that i´d be more risky or less careful if i somewhen begin AFF just because i wasn´t nervous at my first jump. in fact, i think i´m extremely cautious and will it be by beginning the AFF anyway - i even thought i´d be more anxious than any other student because of my age. so, i think it´s just a matter of confidence - maybe it´s only that we can better than others trust in someone else (tm). so we are probably as nervous as others, too, when we do our first jump without tm. try out! greetings martina

haven´t really found out yet how to post into the same threat without answering someone especially; so I do is this way: thank you all above for your welcome! blue skies martina

hi, john doe I´ll send my answer in "privat massage", as the others are certainly not interested in German answers. However: thanks for the welcome martina

Hi, this is martina from Vienna. I´ve been roaming the different forums for a few weeks now, mostly reading, twice posting, but it occured to me some days ago now that I haven´t even said hello first, which is probably very impolite, isn´t it?! so let me catch up on introducing myself now: my name is martina, I´m almost 40 y old and two years ago I fulfilled a long-dreamed wish: a parachute jump. I was very lucky as my tm was/is a very nice and inspiring confidence guy. as it happens to many others too, I got immediately addict to this wonderful world up in the sky, mostly to the seconds of freefalling. I´ve had five further tandems since then; unfortunately my personal situation doesn´t allow to make an AFF-training right now, but in spite of my age I intend to catch up to somewhen. and until then I´ll cheer up with some more tandems, in may or june I´ll jump again and I´m absolutey looking forward to. roaming about in dropzone.com makes things easier, too. wish you all blue skies martina

hello, this is martina from vienna, austria. first of all: excuse my english as I´m no native speaker; second: hope, I´m welcome to the forum although I´m only a tandem-passenger yet. but there´s a nice story to tell according to this topic (funny stories): as I had my first tandem (two years ago) and was immediately addicted to, I persuaded a good friend of mine to try, too, as he has been considering for a while himself. as he is a "wheelchair" preparations took a bit longer than usual, but at last he was hoisted into the helicopter. the heli took off and I was waiting with my camera down there to take the first pictures after the jump. and there he was: happy and exhausted as I expected him to be. but there was sg. else: he showed at his feet: only one shoe, second was missing! we wondered what some hikers could have said when a sneaker just fell down from the sky in front of them, or maybe onto their head?! or maybe it splashed into the Traunsee right beside a surfer?! anyway: we had lot of fun suggesting what could have happened to this shoe. only trouble we had was to get a new pair of shoes on a saturday afternoon, as shops used to have closed at this time on the countryside. I had some tandems afterwards again, but, believe me, I always checked whether my sneakers are well laced up before we go. greetings from vienna martinaQuote