I was born in the Netherlands in 1969. Spent most of my youth in the southern Dutch province of Noord Brabant. I did a number of educations, ranging from mechanical engineering, through social work, to sociology. After working for an ICT company for seven years, I went back to university. Besides my love for whitewater paddling, I thoroughly enjoy communicating with interesting people all over the internet. There are a couple of forums where I spend way too much time... E-mail is probably the most important medium for me to communicate with friends, especially with those who live all over the world. I enjoy communicating with people who have a different language, culture and history, it helps me to improve my foreign language skills, and it gives me a good excuse to go to new countries and get to know other cultures! :-) I travel quite a bit, in part to visit friends who live outside of the Netherlands, but also to paddle new rivers and get to know other paddlers. I firmly believe that you can never know too many people to go paddling with. Besides the things I already mentioned above, I have a wide range of other hobbies. Just to name a few: camping, hiking, visiting museums, history, reading, drawing, playing games, making music. If there's anything specific you'd like to ask or talk about, just e-mail me. My e-mail address can be found on the main home page. Otherwise, if you happen to run into me somewhere on or near the river, say hi. I may be rather easy to recognise, since I'm a bit taller than most kayakers (~6'8" / 201cm). Wilko