Yes, maybe this is a good time for us all to reflect on why we are here on this bbs.

I personally feel I am quite a selfish member of this community, I do take more than I give. I have tried to give as much input as I can on topics I have experience in, but I mainly lurk in the background.

More than the online relationships I have made with people it's the real life ones that matter to me. This is the only online community I have ever met anyone from in real life, other places on the net seem to full of one type of person ( I think you know what I am getting at here ) but I have found fellow empeggers to be on the whole welcoming and fun to be around. boxer has introduced so many different ways of looking at things that have lead me down many many different paths of beer and music sampling, without him I would have never figured out I don't really like beer and I am a cider man, and not all country music sucks as I quite like Alison Krauss.

andym was silly enough to introduce me to Nicola at the last Euro meet, and we are still very happy together to this day (see cheesy attachment), he also makes good company to discuss the many projects we both seem to have in our brains but never get the time to do anything about, most of my other mates start falling asleep at that point of the bbq

I was lucky enough to get a bed at Hotel Julf last summer before the meet, and shared some "interesting" times wandering around Amsterdam with a few well know empeggers All this amoungst numerous offers of help from all sorts of people about all sorts of things.

All these things go to prove I would have been a lesser person if not for the things I have learned here (Three Cheers for Tom!). And I have still got a neat box of tricks that still comes out on long trips, and still wows even after all these years.

But like in any community there is a pecking order, I am at the bottom, others are at the top. And naturally there becomes a time when people start to rub each other up the wrong way. There have been several times recently where I have had to bite my lip really hard to stop myself saying things I might later wish I hadn't.

But isn't this what makes a community interesting, why do we all have to get on all of the time?

We (Nicola and I) have made the decision not to come to the EuroMeet this year, we have a long trip to make to Malaga and back and feel its too far out of the way. We had planned to drop in for Ribs on the way down, but I think that will push the smart that little too far this time around.

So to sum up, I don't think the bbs is dead yet, we are just in a transition period, out with the old and in with the new, the empeg with become less and less a focus for our community, so lets go find something else to get all geeky about...

Cheers

Cris.