The East Bay Barefoot Hikers ran a special hike on Saturday 6th July, 1996 in Redwood Regional Park in order to accomodate the filming schedule of the "Good Morning America" team.
We had excellent weather and hiked one of our favourite trails (West-Ridge/French).
We had twenty-one barefooters along including one beginner ... John Polazio, the producer. The TV crew followed us along the whole trail, documenting what an EBBF hike is like.
Barefooters in attendance were myself, my son Gareth (13), Fred, Darren, Joni, Jan, Phoebe, Tim and his kids Christopher(7), the twins Jonathan and Hilary (5), Vic, young Phoebe (10), Peter, Sandy, Paul, Dan, Maggie, Darcy, Barbara
It's apparently a tradition to have the groups they are covering, introduce the show. At the first rest stop, John had us sit in a semicircle, feet front and together, children on laps, with my son Gareth in the center.
He had Gareth say, "Hi, I'm Gareth Berrow with the East Bay Barefoot Hikers club in Redwood Park, Oakland, California" ... at which point we all yelled "Good Morning America !!" and waved our feet. They did three takes of this. Should turn out well [On the day, They didn't use it after all].
The crew documented us happily traversing mud (couple of takes to get the squelching sound just right), tramping along sunny, dusty paths and dark, deep pine-needle trails, crossing streams, stopping for food/water and so on. It was a *lot* of fun.
John finished the entire hike barefoot and seemed to be a convert, since he stayed barefoot even when he and his crew left us a little early as we had our main lunch-stop near the end of the hike.
The segment is due to air on the Friday, July 12 show. The "Good Morning America" show runs from 7AM to 9AM. The show introduction piece should be at the very beginning (7am) and the main segment on Barefoot Hiking (including the interview of Richard Frazine in Central Park) will be part of a section called "What's Hot", which (I'm told) is near the end. It would be best to just tape the whole thing.
[ The segment (in "What's Hot") aired about 40-45 minutes into the 2-hour show. They didn't use the the "Show Introduction" part, after all. Most people that saw it described it as "short and sweet". It had a section with Richard in New York extolling the virtues of direct tactile contact with the earth and the diminished environmental impact of bare feet as compared to lug-soled boots. The EBBF section showed us enjoying ourselves in the forest. Most of of the shots seemed to be waist-down, or just of feet. It came over in a very positive way. ]
-- Mike Berrow -- East Bay Barefoot Hikers