20 Years of Whiteblaze — Happy (belated) Anniversary !

[Grampie]

Thanks for keeping White Blaze going all these years. I have been a member for all those 20 years. Some posts but always reading others.

[Recalc]

Appreciate the time & effort Rick & moderators have put into this website. Numerous posters over the years have produced a wealth of information I continue to be thankful for.

[Old_Man]

Happy Birthday to Whiteblaze! This forum has been a source of comfort many times when I wanted to hike and couldn't. I love the pics, especially seeing places where I've walked. Here is to 20 more!

[Mike Steger]

Happy 20th WB ... Thanks to everyone who keeps it going and all the great info over the years.......... Thank you all very very much

[Odd Man Out]

Just for fun, I looked at the members list and found there were 5 people who joined on day 1 (09-03-2002): ez-does-it, attroll, SGT Rock, Kerosene, and jlb2012.
Of these, atttroll and Kerosene are still active (i.e. posted within the last year).

Looking deeper, I found there are 16 people who joined in the first year, have been active enough to get 1000 posts, and are still active: Attroll, Kerosene, Jeff, bigcranky, Grampie, TJ aka Teej, gravityman, Lauriep, Lone Wolf, rickb, Jaybird, Alligator, Toolshed, trailangelmary, chknfngrs, and Spirit Walker.

While I was at it, I also found that there are 19 of us who have at least 5000 posts and are still active: Lone Wolf, Alligator, Slo-go'en, Tipi Walter, Venchka, 4eyedbuzzard, bigcranky, rickb, Cookerhiker, Sarcasm the elf, TOW, saltysack, fiddlehead, Monkeyboy, TJ aka Teej, garlic08, attroll, Kerosene, and Odd Man Out. Of the active members, Skyline is next closes to joining the 5000 club.

Finally, the oldest post I could find was post #4 (looking for #1-#3 showed nothing).


https://whiteblaze.net/forum/showthr...ewfull=1#post4

It was by "former admin" (not sure who that was) asking former thru hikers to introduce themselves. This thread has been inactive for exactly 20 years and 2 days. If there is a former thru hiker out there, you could reply and set the record for thread regurgitation.

[Alligator]

A whisper-out to the introverts is that out of all the people who joined in the first year, 65 of them visited the site at least once in the last year. Some of these are folks with lower post counts, almost 2/3 had less than 500 posts, 18 had <100 posts.

[gravityman]

Great history! Came here in 2002 after my first attempt in 2001 needing therapy from other hikers. Went back and restarted from GA and made it to Maine with my wife, Danger.

This site has cost me a lot of money in gear, and was a life saver in between through hikes for me mentally. We still do long trips, but with kids, and often on bikes (at also hiking).

www.ruggedfamilyadventure.com

Thank you for everyone who has contributed over the years! I do feel like it's a loss that people don't still come here to discuss as much as we used to, but life is busy and the internet has gotten much bigger.

Gravityman

PS My only complaint is how slow the pages load now!

[camper10469]

wow its been that long? happy aneversery!

time flys when you're having fun.

[Patrickjd9]

A whisper-out to the introverts is that out of all the people who joined in the first year, 65 of them visited the site at least once in the last year. Some of these are folks with lower post counts, almost 2/3 had less than 500 posts, 18 had <100 posts.

I've only been a member for 17 years, and have just over 500 posts.

Does this make me not an introvert, even though I'm one in real life?

[camper10469]

hahaha ive got the ame millage with low post counts... maybe we were way to busy on the trails to post instead of sitting at the boob tube?

[Alligator]

I've only been a member for 17 years, and have just over 500 posts.

Does this make me not an introvert, even though I'm one in real life?

Beats me, those are simply frequencies of arbitrary post counts at values less than what was defined as "active". While post count is one measure of activity, as is date of last post, there are other measures of "activity". For the less garrulous, some might say introverted, date of last visit is perhaps a more reasonable measure as a rough visitation rate could be estimated which might be more representative for an introvert who posts sparingly. No guarantee at all though on correlating post counts to introversion as introverts can (not will) be quite outgoing when involved with a topic of interest. Anyway, Odd Man Out was making his observation in the context of this being an anniversary thread and I simply wanted to include (and acknowledge) some of our less frequent posters who as a result aren't so readily seen by the general membership.

You can be an I or you can be an E or maybe an F, G, or H.

[Furlough]

Happy Birthday and thanks for being there. Thank you to Rick and the mods over the years for keeping this site going. I joined in 2004. I was a member of Wingfoot's site near it's end. Joined SGT Rock's site as well. Can't recall if that was before I joined Whiteblaze or not. If I recall correctly SGT Rock was helping out, and or maybe a part of the "founding team" and did quite a bit in getting and keeping WhiteBlaze going. Back in those days between 2000 and 2004 I kicked around the internet looking for various forums and sites. I was in the Army back in 2000-2008, and those were busy years - so it was hard to get backpacking trail time. At some point in the 2006-2007 time frame SGT Rock and I crossed trails during our deployments briefly at a mess hall (dining facility) in Baghdad.

[Pringles]

Happy birthday Whiteblaze, from one of the introverts. I might not be so introverted, as much as not saying “Me, too” all the time. I never thought of myself as a refugee before, but I guess I am. Still learning and still hiking.

Long ago, I remember seeing a picture of a snail, and someone had captioned it something like, “Thru hiker, 2018.” I remember thinking that was so far in the future. Now I feel bad because the snail has probably finished, and I’m still slogging along with 40%.