Turning 40 Makes Them a Little Jumpy

Tuesday morning lay heavy on the airfield, a thick overcast that might well reflect the mood of most men marking their 40th birthdays.

To Myles Elsing and Jim Wallace, though, this fog was no metaphor. It was only an annoyance. The pair had decided to celebrate their birthdays by jumping out of an airplane. Forty times.

A thick, morning fog delayed their start by 3 1/2 hours, forcing them to forgo the luxury of high-altitude jumps, and the fun of free fall, in favor of speed.

They jumped 2,500 feet above the dusty brown airstrip from a yellow single-engine plane with a broad red stripe. They landed in the weeds beside the runway, beginning to pack their brightly colored chutes before the Cessna even touched down.

And then they climbed aboard the little plane for succeeding jumps--21, 18, sometimes just 16 minutes after the last.

“Why? I don’t know,” said Elsing, a Newport Beach police officer and Corona del Mar resident who turns 40 today. “It just seemed like a good idea.

“Our favorite thing just happens to be jumping. . . . Why not combine our 40th birthdays and what we love to do?”

The men were joined on their jumps by other sky-diving friends who alternated jumping from the plane, helping on the ground and catching some rays.

“I call these iron-man days,” said Wallace, an Irvine resident who teaches sky diving at Perris Valley Airport and waits on tables at an Orange County restaurant. His birthday was Sunday.

Forty jumps “is just a neat goal to set for myself,” Wallace explained. “ . . . It’s a helluva lot of fun.

“You’ve got to put it all together: endurance, (parachute) packing technique, the sky-dive itself, canopy control and discipline. It’s a chance to test all those skills.”

“See ya,” Elsing said to pilot Rocky Kemp as he made his 12th--or was it 13th?--jump of the day. By midday, the clouds had succumbed to the hot California sun, leaving only the smog to shroud the nearby hills.

In the end, however, morning fog and evening darkness kept the pair from reaching their goal. They were only able to make 30 jumps.

“I realize it’s 10 years away,” Wallace said, as he folded his parachute into his pack, “but I fully expect to do 50 at 50.”