First Impressions?

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Originally posted by Schmear
I resurfaced as Schmear in the summer of 2001 and was jonged (by request; wanted to get it over with) by Tyrone Shoelaces himself. What a prick! [winky]

ha! that was my first and last Jong-ing ever I swear. It was that special

yeah I remember the snowflake on the p-mag homepage too. I think if you rolled over it, it spoke: "mmmm...pooowwwder...." or something like that.

Then I came back a few months later just before the end of 2000 and saw that this place was alive. It just so happened that at the time I was moving from Philly to CA, so I registered, and asked for beta. Got some beta...but importantly, got to laugh my ass off too. I was hooked from day one.

I haven't been posting too much lately....and when I do I don't seem to put the effort into it that I used to (whatever that means). Just been getting mired in work and life in general...so I missed the Snow Country fake TR or whatever the hell it was and now I see that pinner has left....that focking sucks. I was planning on posting less and less anyway over the summer and then fiering back up in the fall....

...the boards' quality has always ebbed and flowed with the seasons. It's all about going with the flow......sometimes you can go with it and sometimes you can't...and when you can't, well the smart ones realize this and take a step back. Everyone needs to at some point.

oh and yeah, the buffet ain't bad, but I'm all about the early-bird special these days.

[JMO]

First impression? I was pumped that there was a place where I could read and write about skiing, surfing, mt. biking and everything related - and that this place wasn't weighed down by regulations, rules, and younguns new to the Internet. It's like a party in my head, anytime I'm in front of my computer. I only know a couple of you in person but I love being a part of this. It reaffirms a lot of stuff that most other people take for granted, namely that playing outside can be awesome no matter how old you are.

[acostiga]

[pir]
stoke? my pops just called and said that he was picking up the tab for my season pass this upcomming season, since i'll be a poor grad student.

what can i say?

the man introduced us both to skiing when i was younger because he thought it'd be a good idea to expose me to something he didn't have access to during his youth. many years later, we're both hooked. getting a phone call at 8:45am in late may from your father, who is really excited about next year's ski season and already bought passes, feels good. it's the love, and that kind of positive stoke is what my best experiences with powdermag and tgr have been all about.

strange attention-seeking weirdos are out on the streets surrounding my office- i don't need to be on the internet for that. i can go have a street-corner preacher yell some pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo in my ear whenever i'd like, or stroll into a bar and listen to some lunatic rant and rave about politics. when i sign on to the tgr boards, it's because of the positivity i've found here. it's because of the stoke. it's because of the love.
[/percoset induced rant]

[bad_roo]

Skiing for me was something that middle class people did as an excuse to wear ridiculous clothes. When I stumbled upon pmag.com I was in a very foreign place. The clean-cut jolly hockey sticks image of skiing was replaced bysomething dirtier, funkier and more welcoming. Where was the elitism and the social exclusion? Didn't really find it. Pretty much everyone welcomed this Brit ingenu and meeting up with you guys proved what I've heard again and again. 'Never met a maggot I didn't like'.

[teledave]

I came in back in winter '01/02, I think. I was bored at work and knew that I'd get fired if I just surfed porno sites all day so I just randomly thought one day, "I wonder if POWDER (since it was all caps back then) has a website?" Well, one thing led to another and next thing you know I was reading about Owen's explosive diarrhea, Iceman (I think) flipping a match head in some guys ear at the airport, oh yeah and people were talking about skiing and they had pictures, too. Some of these fackers (since you couldn't type fuckers there) were pretty darn good, but some of them were just everyday hacks like me. I was hooked, "Welcome to your second worst addiction." I lurked for a month or so and then one day in a post-had a couple margaritas at lunch-hour session I made some flippant comment that infuriated Kumquat and LAN, which in turn brought on the fury of D-Day, Iceman, Pinner and others. After a few weeks longer I learned to "post first, smoke crack later", and actually contributed a few funny stories of my own and eventually was accepted within the community (I think partially because I just refused to go away ).

Never met any of the maggots in person until the UT mini this year where I met quite a few and unfortunately missed meeting quite a few, and just to be repetitive, I've never met a maggot I didn't like.

This place is like a family of a thousand, sure there's the strange fifth cousins out there but there's also your brothers and sisters that you'd do anything for, and they'd do the same for you. Just because we're all maggots.

[shera]

Aaahhh, PowMag - the big powder room in the sky. I couldn't ski it for shit though.

[iceman]

I found powmag in early December 2000, and I sorta jumped in like a house on fire. Within two weeks pretty much everybody hated me, and I loved it. I was battling the Poundkeys, Ski Professor, even Armchair, who described me as a pathetic loser acting out Monty Python skits by myself in my parents basement (how he knew that, I'll never know). I had an epic battle with JR over a simple misunderstanding.

I have become less interested in battling people, except for the occasional moron, but I remain as addicted as ever. I read the board every day I can, which is most of them, and I pretty much read every thread.

There have been quite a few people who have left, and I don't really understand it, because there is funny shit, and stoke, and blather and the odd fight, all stuff I would think most people would continue to enjoy over time. But the board goes on, whether specific people are here or not.

Two years ago at about this time there was a rash of retirement announcements, the mood then was much as it is now. Most of those people returned, let's hope that's the case this time as well.

If I had my way, all retirements would be like vinzclortho's: a big announcement and a dramatic slam of the door on the way out, followed by a return in about 18 hours.

[sandytheskier]

My Lame story:
I was starting to lose friends because I was so intensely into skiing. I figured it was time to try to find people to converse with who shared my obsessions.
An old boss use to be involved with powder's board and recommended this one to me.
I had never chatted before on the internet before but was pschyked to share beta with fellow ski freaks. I jumped on the first day,signed up and completely jonged myself by asking if I could be a maggot (I didn't quite understand the concept yet).

Everyone thought I was a fake (but splat) and harrassed me like no other. I thought to myself,"This is what a girl has to do to meet fellow skiers, this sucks!"
I took and break and figured out that I would just grin and bear the board until people warmed up tro me. The process is still happening.

[Baconzoo]

Karl got me over here because I had some good AK pics on the internet. Seems we were both infected with Valdisease.

I was hooked from the get go. I'm glad to see less of the assholes and more of the stoke. Fighting on the internet is retarded.

[Karl Stall]

Glad you made it, B. This place is still amazing, and has its cycles, just like most things in this world.

Things today don't seem much different than when I showed up in 2002, but the sensitivity to asinine comments seems to be on the rise.

Still keeps my days funny and light, though.

P.S. - those VDZ pics are the tits.

[Spicoli]

I typed in the words “hot+naked+babes+skiing” into Google (boy does that search engine need work). This was the only non-pay site that came up, so I said wtf and clicked the link.

Found a lot of cool vibe around here, a lot of stoke to get through the dayz and some sick ski porn.

Still waiting on the hot naked babes actually skiing though.

[CUBUCK]

I moved out to Colorado for school four years ago. I was trying to get into teleing at the time and stumbled on TTips.com Lurked there until someone had crosslinked to a post on pmag so I started lurking over on powder. There were some pretty serious flame wars going on at the time and noobies were getting ripped apart with every post. I laughed my ass off everytime I visited the forum and knew I wanted to be part of this skier community. I started sporatically dropping posts until I built up a safe post count before starting my own posts. Then with a large group of other maggots I left pmag and came over to TGR last october. I have never really gotten into it with anyone and I would like to keep it that way. Now that I'm here I couldn't be happier.

[Karl Stall]

Originally posted by CUBUCK
I moved out to Colorado for school four years ago. I was trying to get into teleing at the time and stumbled on TTips.com Lurked there until someone had crosslinked to a post on pmag so I started lurking over on powder. There were some pretty serious flame wars going on at the time and noobies were getting ripped apart with every post. I laughed my ass off everytime I visited the forum and knew I wanted to be part of this skier community. I started sporatically dropping posts until I built up a safe post count before starting my own posts. Then with a large group of other maggots I left pmag and came over to TGR last october. I have never really gotten into it with anyone and I would like to keep it that way. Now that I'm here I couldn't be happier.

That's a cool attitude.

[watersnowdirt]

Jumped on to Powmag at lph's suggestion in 2002. wonderwoman and I created a fake identity called Shredbetty and for 3 or 4 days I posted as a ditsy teeny bopper snowboarder (well, I do snowboard...). I have rarely laughed that hard, and though I got completely worked over, I thought that place was brilliant. I was instantly hooked. Dumped the fake alias and come on as my current incarnation of wsd - my true self.

For a long time I sort of stayed androgynous, and tried not to let on that I am a woman. I just wanted to be able to talk about well - water, snow and dirt with a bunch of people who loved it as much as I do, and I saw what happened to women on this board. I knew that I would avoid alot of that crap by just showing that I loved wrecking myself in the outdoors as much as the next guy, and that I'd be fine.

And now, I check and post daily. I've met a whole hell of a lot of you - skiied with you, partied with you, played left handed air hockey with you, cooked with you, mt biked with you, and shared my soul with you. I can truly say there hasn't been a person I've met from here that I haven't liked.

And the crap here does get me down, but I try to remember that anything this special is at risk of someone trying to wreck it. Some people are just insecure and unhappy enough to feel the need to piss on something that they know is better than they are. It's part of life, and it sucks.

I hope Pinner comes back - truly. He is part of the old guard, and he is a great contributor - with his stoke, his wise ass comments, his snap you back to reality remarks, and frankly, he's been around this block.

This place is amazing, but it's not Utopia. Shit is gonna fly, people are gonna leave and maybe some will come back. But the responsibility is with all of us to create the kind of place that other people will want to come visit.

[Flash]

Like many, I started this internet skiing weirdness thing at Epic. For me, it was '99 (when Epic was for some reason called the Barking Beaver forum). I also occasionally posted on the TGR board back then as well. However, at the time, Epic felt more like a community, while TGR seemed to be little more than occasional posts about the latest movie. The K2 board was a raucous crazy place in those days, but it too often deteriorated into inane drivel. As Epic morphed into lameness, PMag developed into a real community (a brutal and caustic, yet really freaking awesome community). Then came The Change, and here we are once again.

In my view, all true Maggots are inherently good, and the trolls and aliases are weak. I have learned from, skied with, and met some very cool Maggots, and the stoke and humor provided here is second to none. This place is truly good, and the vibe here is unique. Summer may be bumpy, but I have faith that this community will continue to thrive. It is too good not to.....

[A-wreck]

I'm new....
don't post very much.......
just listen a lot.......
I like it here ..............
everyone seems to be pretty intelligent and painfully witty
________
silver surfer vaporizer

[acostiga]

Originally posted by A-wreck
I'm new....
don't post very much.......
just listen a lot.......
I like it here ..............
everyone seems to be pretty intelligent and painfully witty

you employ the "......" with great repetition. i like the cut of your jib, sailor.....

[yogachik]

I liked this place from the get-go.

I have been reading and posting on the mammoth boards since about 97, in the earlier days that board was cool and funny. I met up and skied/rode with fellow mammoth board posters all the time, so the concept here wasn't foreign to me (even though my friends thought it was weird "you met him/her on the INTERNET??"). In fact, some of the people from the mammoth boards are really good friends of mine, and it's been 7 years now.

I followed Punani over here this past winter, he posted about a Chamonix TR on the mamm boards with a link to the pics - and I've always wanted to go to Cham, so I clicked on the link and that led to more clicking which led to lots and lots of laughing. I thought this was the absolute funniest, smartest, coolest group of people I'd ever stumbled upon on the internet (and I read lots of boards). There was a thread about grammar and I posted, not having any idea about JONGing or anything, and got promptly JONGed by either Viva or Beaver (I remember it being an animal avatar). I've posted plenty, met lots of super cool people, and can't wait to hang out with everyone this weekend. I love the spirit of this place and have jumped right in, I love that everyone opens their house to fellow maggots, and love how stoked everyone is on a sport and lifestyle that is my one true addiction. There's nothing like finding like-minded people to connect with, and that's what this place is.

By the way - I used to have some people on ignore (useful function, that), and noticed that since the mass exodus, I never see that "you have this person on ignore" in a thread, anymore.

[frozenwater]

September of 2000 was a tough time for me. Everyone I knew was dying or getting divorced. I kind of found myself alone in the world. I was stuck in cubicle hell, converting a bunch of financial information from one system to another. Bored, depressed and knowing winter was still months away got me surfing the web and I found powder.

I had no idea what a message board was, I still kick myself that I didn't register earlier, but instead I kicked back and read for about a month. It was a damn small group at the time. They talked in code. But it pulled me in.

My first maggot meeting was with MD9. Not a bad start at all. In short succesion I was skiing with him, powderwhore, pinner, twoplanker, dday, etc. The board was compensating for a really shitty life.

Since then I have hosted literally to many maggots to count in my home, taken them skiing, given them advice, helped some start businesses, told others they were assholes.

My best friends in the world are maggots. I would rather hang out with them than my old friends. You guys understand me more and I like you more. I know count friends in Washington, oregon, california, colorado, Idaho, Mountana, Utah, Chicago, Ohio, DC, hell all over the fucking globe.

I went from cube hell to corporate hell to completely running an entire company in these years. I finished my BS degree early on, then got a masters. I've had children. I've seen more people die. My parents divorced. This place has kept me sane, kept me humble, and is one of the best things in my life. During all of this I wracked up around 3K of posts at the original pmag, another 600 at the revamped pmag, and not so many here. Life is busy, but I always check in. This is home, you know?

I love it, I HATE the fuckers that want to destroy it. I've got to much riding on this place to want to give up on it.

Thanks for all the good times maggots. Here is looking at the next 4 years!

[CaddyDaddy77]

I satrted over on Powder, I think I lurked for about 2 or 3 moths, not really sure what to make of it. I liked the jokes, banter and friendly ribbing that was going on in there.
I threw my hat in somewhere in 01 I think, and didn't get the memo that told you how to get your old post count, or date back, so now it's 12 something 02.

I think I had it handed to me pretty good at the begining, but also had my eyes widened my guys posting about amazing trips in South America, Europe, hell lots of places in the US, I had never heard of.

I like this group, I haven't met many but have liked all that I have met. Everyone has that same drive, that same addiction, that same problem, we all like to slide around on snow. I don't care if it's one stick or two, it's great to have others that are as passionate as you are, and to share it with others.

I like being the first to know that X company is coming out with a new ski, etc., it's fun. It's cool to hear that so and so just bought two new pairs of skis in May. I think I actually used examples of others quivers to justify purchases of my own. Which, btw, does not make for much of an agruement with the gf.

On another note, the first and only time I met Pinner, he pm'd about bootpacking at Silverton, we exchangeds numbers and said we would see if it would work out. He called and was wondering if we were heading up, I was being slovenly and really digging my couch at the moment, and was kind of putting it off, he quickly started giving me a hard time and some ribbing, and I quickly folded, and gathered some friends up.

It's not that I had an amazing day bootpacking, or even actually got much of a chance to talk with him, but the fact that he was pushing me was really cool. That is what this community does, pushes, pushes for each of us to ski a little longer, go a little bigger, and try a little harder.


Thanks all.

[jp]

Flash got me hooked this year. Been lurking for a while now. TGR helped me through a crappy east coast winter. I spend far too much work time reading the TRs and other stuff but I love it.

You all is good people. I imagine the losers out there will eventually get bored and move on.

[Endlessseason]

Frozen-
I remember how shocked I was when you quit the board the first time. I think it was around the first part of 2002. I remember the finality of your post and that you "weren't coming back." When you couldn't even stay away for a few days I was much less shocked when you retired from Powmag the second time. After that, I didn't even notice if there were other times.

Maybe Pinner will do the same thing.

[Grange]

I started when I was researching for my new set of skis. I checked out the the K2 website and lurked for while before posting. Got invited to Utopia and still laugh when I think about SuPu doing a 1080 on Morrison Twins. When That site died I found Powder.

I lurked there for a long time because I wasn't sure how registering would affect my computer usage at work and whether or not I'd get caught. One day said screw it and registered. When that site was invaded by Daniel I, like many, migrated here.

I haven't actually met any maggots although had a few PM with some and to honest really don't consider myself one since I only post here during work (I don't have a personal computer) and have never used an alias . I've been around for several years and have been motivated to ski when I didn't feel like going simply because I read a TR. For that I am greatful because I have never really had a bad day on the hill (except for when I have broken a bone). So thanks to all that allowed me to have a great day on the slopes.

[bagtagley]

I first posted on Powmag in October of 2001 asking about a pair of Volkl V's. I actually got good feedback, so I kept checking the Tech Talk section for more advice. Soon I realized that there was another Forum with tons more activity.

I knew that internet forums were pretty territorial, so I lurked for a while and got a feel for the place. I've never been a big poster, but I've checked up pretty regularly since the beginning. My only serious hiatus was during my skiing extravaganza after I graduated college. I still regret not taking advantage of the wealth of friendships I'd stumbled upon before that trip.

The funny thing is that not only has this place become a community for me to come and hang out, but I've learned more about skiing (avalanche danger, places, backcountry, etiquette, gear, etc) than I ever could have imagined. Given the length of time I've been a part of both places, I'm way behind on meeting people. But I'm not worried, because I know the people I care most about making turns with aren't going anywhere

Good Thread.

[Tippster]

Well, I kept reading about the Maggots in POWDER, which I've been a subscriber to for many moons. One day my boss decides to give me a desk and a work-station, even though I don't use either in my line of business. I'm sitting around at MY DESK, feeling important, waiting for the next presser to start, and reading PowMag, when once again some little article mentions the maggots. I surf on over there - lo & behold the firewall doesn't mind! - and joined up immediately. I post something stupid and get JONGED by -

Pinner (Pinnoir, at that time & place, yes/no?)

Damn, that was only a year ago, and it only took me about 2 weeks to figure out WTF "JONG" meant (*proud.*) I tried to ignore the rain, then left "that place" when the water kept rising -- or was that the foundation kept falling? -- and ended up here a month after the big Exodus. I even got to meet a slew of you at the GMD. Next year I promise to actually ski with you as well, although the Pain Train's reputation makes me nervous...

I read this board every day. It makes me laugh, it makes me think, it makes me dream, it makes me angry, it makes me sick, it makes me sad....

If we were talking about a book, sculpture, film, etc. that had so many emotional effects on us, it would be considered a masterpiece. I wouldn't change anything about my internet home, 'cause that "ignore" feature really fucking works. Come back soon, Pinner.

Now, someone explain this TPS shit to me without making me watch some goddamn movie and the world (at least mine) will be a better place.