The Death of RBP
 

"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
krueger wrote:

But in some respects, I think this also reflects the state of the
paddling
community, especially open boaters on the West Coast. It used to be our
rivers were a busy place with lots of folks of both persuasion out there
enjoying a great sport. Did anyone catch "My Turn" in Newsweek? Now it
seems that every other outing, our group is the only one out there and
it's
getting smaller too........We're getting older, our boats are getting
older
and neither are replaceable to a certain degree. Yes, along with the
creaky
joints, our interests are slowly shifting or is it expanding? Be it
better
or worse. But as long as the knees still bend, the ankles still flex and
the
wrists/fingers are willing to grip, we'll still paddle. Rivers may
morph
into the bay, slough, and lagoons, but the spirit carries on!

The higher cost of gasoline might have something to do with it.
I was going to drive north from San Jose to run the class 2 Klamath
(below Copco reservoir) last weekend, but didn't want to pay for gas.
However two weekends ago on the South Silver below Ice House reservoir,
there were scads of kayakers!

Build a river, and they will come!

I was going to submit a TR of my recent Grand Canyon adventure,
but the audience here is so small I didn't take the time.


I think the gas issue is a point - I'm lucky and have a dozen little
fiddling around rivers near here, and I get out paddling quite a bit, but
they're hardly worth a trip report...even my moonlight treks down the
Kalamazoo at midnight are a lot more fun to do than to read about.

I still read, and I've got most of the spam canned, but things are a bit
slow around here.

Cricket

The Death of RBP
 

On Oct 30, 6:21 pm, "Cricket" wrote:
"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message

...



krueger wrote:

But in some respects, I think this also reflects the state of the
paddling
community, especially open boaters on the West Coast. It used to be our
rivers were a busy place with lots of folks of both persuasion out there
enjoying a great sport. Did anyone catch "My Turn" in Newsweek? Now it
seems that every other outing, our group is the only one out there and
it's
getting smaller too........We're getting older, our boats are getting
older
and neither are replaceable to a certain degree. Yes, along with the
creaky
joints, our interests are slowly shifting or is it expanding? Be it
better
or worse. But as long as the knees still bend, the ankles still flex and
the
wrists/fingers are willing to grip, we'll still paddle. Rivers may
morph
into the bay, slough, and lagoons, but the spirit carries on!

The higher cost of gasoline might have something to do with it.
I was going to drive north from San Jose to run the class 2 Klamath
(below Copco reservoir) last weekend, but didn't want to pay for gas.
However two weekends ago on the South Silver below Ice House reservoir,
there were scads of kayakers!

Build a river, and they will come!

I was going to submit a TR of my recent Grand Canyon adventure,
but the audience here is so small I didn't take the time.

I think the gas issue is a point - I'm lucky and have a dozen little
fiddling around rivers near here, and I get out paddling quite a bit, but
they're hardly worth a trip report...even my moonlight treks down the
Kalamazoo at midnight are a lot more fun to do than to read about.

I still read, and I've got most of the spam canned, but things are a bit
slow around here.

Cricket

I think one major reason RBP has lost favor in the past 10-15 years is
the advent and tremendous popularity of the WWW. Not naming any
websites in particular, but people love websites, because they offer a
much richer mix of media than simple ASCII text, which Usenet is
limited to. Plain and simple.

It's almost a wonder Usenet still exists! I mean, horses and buggy's
barely exist anymore, and such is the way with yesteryear's
technologies, of which Usenet is these days, yano?

Maybe someone needs to start an rbp.com website! Whoops! Someone
already did:

http://rbp.com/

;-)

John Kuthe...

John Kuthe...

The Death of RBP
 

On Oct 28, 11:29 pm, John Kuthe wrote:
On Oct 28, 8:51 pm, John Kuthe wrote:

On Oct 28, 8:17 pm, (Drew Dalgleish)
wrote:

Gee my sever must be taking great care of me. I've been mostly lurking
here for years and only seeing 5 to 10 posts a day mostly on topic
with very few flame wars. I like checking in on this group except
when the sponson thing happens

I just Googled "Tim Imgram", and there's a LOT of Tim Ingrams out
there!

Good ole Sponson Boy! I wonder what meds he's on these days! ;-)

"'Good' ole Sponson Boy?" The advent of Ingram and Njall, just at the
point of technology when alternative online forums (elsewhere adduced)
were emerging, is the biggest single reason for the demise of our
favorite online hangout. Those guys turned away enough of our number,
who by then had different places to go for similar correspondence, to
reduce our numbers below the critical mass necessary to keep such a
forum vibrant and progressive. These guys are mindless vandals who
destroyed a thing of beauty, out of simple selfish glee.

I hung in there for several years after the sponson wars, but there
were just too few of us to keep any good discussions going, so I
finally gave up and went to BoaterTalk. As fate would have it, Eric
Princen, owner of BoaterTalk, around then had cleaned up BoaterTalk's
act sufficiently that I was able to enjoy it. So there was both a
carrot and a stick drawing me away from r.b.p.

I've continued to check in almost daily over the last few years, just
popping my head in and rarely seeing any new threads of interest to me
(Bill Tuthill's wonderful trip reports being the most glaring
exception), and now I find that over the last few months I am looking
in less and less frequently. Today is the first time in a week or
more. Yet I still check BoaterTalk, Paddle Prattle, and CBoats.net
almost daily, and get a flood of eMail from the lists of three
paddling clubs.

So long, friends. I still hope to run into all of you on some river
some time. I hope NOT to run into Ingram or Njall, because then I
might end up in jail.

-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--
Richard Hopley, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll

The Death of RBP
 

"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
ps.com...
On Oct 28, 11:29 pm, John Kuthe wrote:
On Oct 28, 8:51 pm, John Kuthe wrote:

On Oct 28, 8:17 pm, (Drew Dalgleish)
wrote:

Gee my sever must be taking great care of me. I've been mostly
lurking
here for years and only seeing 5 to 10 posts a day mostly on topic
with very few flame wars. I like checking in on this group except
when the sponson thing happens

I just Googled "Tim Imgram", and there's a LOT of Tim Ingrams out
there!

Good ole Sponson Boy! I wonder what meds he's on these days! ;-)

"'Good' ole Sponson Boy?" The advent of Ingram and Njall, just at the
point of technology when alternative online forums (elsewhere adduced)
were emerging, is the biggest single reason for the demise of our
favorite online hangout. Those guys turned away enough of our number,
who by then had different places to go for similar correspondence, to
reduce our numbers below the critical mass necessary to keep such a
forum vibrant and progressive. These guys are mindless vandals who
destroyed a thing of beauty, out of simple selfish glee.

I hung in there for several years after the sponson wars, but there
were just too few of us to keep any good discussions going, so I
finally gave up and went to BoaterTalk. As fate would have it, Eric
Princen, owner of BoaterTalk, around then had cleaned up BoaterTalk's
act sufficiently that I was able to enjoy it. So there was both a
carrot and a stick drawing me away from r.b.p.

I've continued to check in almost daily over the last few years, just
popping my head in and rarely seeing any new threads of interest to me
(Bill Tuthill's wonderful trip reports being the most glaring
exception), and now I find that over the last few months I am looking
in less and less frequently. Today is the first time in a week or
more. Yet I still check BoaterTalk, Paddle Prattle, and CBoats.net
almost daily, and get a flood of eMail from the lists of three
paddling clubs.

So long, friends. I still hope to run into all of you on some river
some time. I hope NOT to run into Ingram or Njall, because then I
might end up in jail.

-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--
Richard Hopley, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll


Good lord, I have been bopping in and out of here longer than I thought -
even I vaguely remember the sponson wars, though not any personalities
associated with them...or even what the actual argument was. Sponson is
just sort of one of those words that sticks in your head if repeated often
enough.

Cricket

The Death of RBP
 

John Kuthe wrote:

I think one major reason RBP has lost favor in the past 10-15 years is
the advent and tremendous popularity of the WWW. Not naming any
websites in particular, but people love websites, because they offer a
much richer mix of media than simple ASCII text, which Usenet is
limited to. Plain and simple.

Agreed.

It's almost a wonder Usenet still exists! I mean, horses and buggy's
barely exist anymore, and such is the way with yesteryear's
technologies, of which Usenet is these days, yano?

If properly used (which generally it is not) Usenet can still function
as the populist Consumer Reports of the 'net. Consumer Reports may be
non-profit and all that, but sometimes one wonders why they make the
particular buying decisions that they do. Most other product comparison
magazines or websites are heavily biased by advertising.

Whereas if you know that a particular Usenet poster is reliable, you can
trust their recommendations, modulo forgeries.

The major media conglomerates probably don't want Usenet to continue.
AOL, a division of Time-Warner, was the first to kill Usenet service
for their subscribers. It's terrible when citizens talk among themselves,
rather than listening to propaganda on TV.

The Death of RBP
 

I think it's more than just fuel costs.

A group of us open boaters were on the Klamath 4th July week, and normally
we see rafters and kayakers, but rarely canoeist. Curly Jack CG, Sarah
Totten CG are full, commercial rafters at Trees of Heaven, Happy Camp,
Curley Jack, and Ferry Point put-ins. This year we saw one youth group of 3
rafts, and one guided raft on the Happy Camp run, and one group at Trees of
Heaven, and the camp grounds were basicly empty... Unheard of! To our
surprise though, the surf wave at School House is now considered a "park 'n
play" spot, and was occupied with lots of kayakers.

We still enjoyed having the river to ourselves, but it was almost too quiet!

Added note: Rattle Snake and The Trench have seen some changes from our
last visit 2 years ago.

Carol

"Bill Tuthill" wrote in message
...
krueger wrote:

But in some respects, I think this also reflects the state of the
paddling
community, especially open boaters on the West Coast. It used to be our
rivers were a busy place with lots of folks of both persuasion out there
enjoying a great sport. Did anyone catch "My Turn" in Newsweek? Now it
seems that every other outing, our group is the only one out there and
it's
getting smaller too........We're getting older, our boats are getting
older
and neither are replaceable to a certain degree. Yes, along with the
creaky
joints, our interests are slowly shifting or is it expanding? Be it
better
or worse. But as long as the knees still bend, the ankles still flex and
the
wrists/fingers are willing to grip, we'll still paddle. Rivers may
morph
into the bay, slough, and lagoons, but the spirit carries on!

The higher cost of gasoline might have something to do with it.
I was going to drive north from San Jose to run the class 2 Klamath
(below Copco reservoir) last weekend, but didn't want to pay for gas.
However two weekends ago on the South Silver below Ice House reservoir,
there were scads of kayakers!

Build a river, and they will come!

I was going to submit a TR of my recent Grand Canyon adventure,
but the audience here is so small I didn't take the time.

The Death of RBP
 

most people don't like to read things they don't agree with,
so they prefer moderated sites instead of usenet.

Dirk

The Death of RBP
 

On Nov 5, 5:00 pm, wrote:
most people don't like to read things they don't agree with,
so they prefer moderated sites instead of usenet.

Dirk

I disagree with that, so I won't read it.

--riverman

The Death of RBP
 

On Nov 5, 3:00 am, wrote:
most people don't like to read things they don't agree with,
so they prefer moderated sites instead of usenet.

Dirk

I disagree!! Well, maybe it's true since you said "most people". I'm
definitely NOT most people! One of my fellow nursing students asked me
the other day "What's your role in society?" (an assessment thing we
have to do on.for patients), and I told her, "I'm the weirdo. Every
society needs it's weirdos to help them define the societal norms, and
whatever society I find myself in, I'm always the weirdo."

Weird how that works, yano? ;-)

John Kuthe...

The Death of RBP
 

On Nov 5, 11:05 am, John Kuthe wrote:
On Nov 5, 3:00 am, wrote:

most people don't like to read things they don't agree with,
so they prefer moderated sites instead of usenet.

Dirk

I disagree!! Well, maybe it's true since you said "most people". I'm
definitely NOT most people! One of my fellow nursing students asked me
the other day "What's your role in society?" (an assessment thing we
have to do on.for patients), and I told her, "I'm the weirdo. Every
society needs it's weirdos to help them define the societal norms, and
whatever society I find myself in, I'm always the weirdo."

Weird how that works, yano? ;-)

John Kuthe...

Or, as I am wont to put it: "irritating as they are, we really need
the extremists to help the rest of us define the middle ground."

Oops. Did I just say Kuthe is irritating?

-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--
Richard Hopley, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll