Article by Chuck Gleason

I was called to travel to Europe on business on short notice in late May this year.  I was scheduled to fly to Europe on May 29 and return on June 4.  During my trip, I would visit Zurich, Switzerland, Frankfort, Germany, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  Our schedule had us staying in Amsterdam over the weekend of May 31, so I thought I would give our Locate a Footer a try.  I had never been to Amsterdam, and I figured if I had a shot at finding someone to pull me, I'd throw my barefoot bag on the plane just in case.

My first email was to Eddie Smit and Jan Ter Wee.  I saw that they were from Amsterdam and knew they were both great footers.  I received an email back from Eddie the next day and we were a go.  After trading schedules, we determined that Saturday morning would be the best time to get together.

Eddie asked me if he could bring along a few other footers that he skied with on a regular basis.  I told him I'd like to meet as many skiers as he could get together on such short notice.

My business partner Joe Isaac and I were staying at the Swiss Hotel in downtown Amsterdam.  Eddie picked us up from our hotel at 8am that morning, and to my surprise drove us about an hour and a half to Hasselt, where they ski.  I was most surprised to find out that Eddie had woken up early that morning to drive an hour into the city to pick us up and drive us back out to Hasselt.  He never once hesitated or made us feel like he was going out of his way.  I can't thank Eddie enough.  His extra effort made it all happen.

When we arrived in Hasselt, Eddie introduced us to Jan Ter Wee, Mathijs Zielman and his father Arno Zielman (President of the Belgium Barefoot Club).  I had heard of Arno through Andre De Villiers, and was pleased to finally get a chance to meet him and his son Mathijs.  For those of you who don't know Mathijs, maybe this picture will ring a bell.  Can you tell he has spent a lot of time training with Andre?  He's a quiet kid on land, but a show-man on the water.

I had a great time getting to know the guys and cracking jokes with each other.  I've found that no matter where I go in the world, once you step in the boat, the fun we have is universal.  And when you don't speak the same language, it can be even more fun teaching each other your slang sayings and different barefoot techniques. 

The funniest thing I remember hearing was right after my first barefoot run.  The boat pulls up to me with Jan Ter Wee driving and Eddie says to me; "You're a lot better than we expected."  I said I guess my Footstock reputation got here before I did eh? 

After skiing, we offered to take them all out to lunch, but they insisted we come back to Arno's house for lunch, where his wife made us plenty of sandwiches as we sat around a talked about the sport.  We had some good laughs talking about some of the crazy stuff Andre had done while with them, and they gave me their predictions on how Andre and Zane would do at Footstock.  I even asked them if they knew who Dave Mueller was and what their comments where on his upcoming attempt at a Front to Back. 

So check out the following video to see for yourself what it was like visiting and barefooting in Amsterdam with the Belgium Barefoot Team.