27 August 2007 - My 40th birthday present from my sister and her family was a body flying session in an indoor skydiving machine - it's a massive vertical wind tunnel - you step into the tube and take off.

The experience was quite exhilarating - you only get a couple of minutes airborne in the thing, but it seems like a lot more and it's like nothing I've ever done before.

My son, David, also came along and - as usual - he took to it intuitively - probably the best flyer out of our group.

The package includes half an hour or so of pre-flight training. I expected this to be mostly waffle, but actually, it's quite essential - maintaining a stable flying position involves subtle changes of posture that are somewhat counterintuitive - so the training largely involves understanding and reacting to the hand gestures made by the instructor (the environment is far too noisy to hold a spoken conversation).

It also included a DVD of the flight session, Here are the edited highlights: