I found PAFF in 2005 and have been a steady poster ever since (I was "Fishidiot" until a few years ago).
Over the years, posting on and reading PAFF has been a pleasant and consistent sort of escapism for me during difficult and challenging periods, including a combat deployment and some career bumps and challenges during good times and bad. PAFF has always been here and remains my favorite place online. To this day, I've felt little desire to expand into other forms of social media and online activities and have to push myself to look elsewhere and try new things. I keep coming back here.
It's reached the point now that I can even think of myself as a younger man back when I first engaged with this site. We long haulers have grown literally and figuratively. Some of my personal opinions on various topics related to PA FFing and angling habits and preferences have also grown and evolved over time.
I teach writing and, for me, PAFF has been an outlet for my own desire to write for an audience as well as the largest contained collection of my own thoughts. With the post counter reset multiple times I can only estimate... but I believe I've written something in the range of twenty thousand posts, most of which are multiple paragraphs, here on PAFF.
I became a moderator about a decade ago and this changed how I interacted with the site. In the ensuing years, the site has cooled and settled down, much for the better (this was not of my doing, but happened naturally). At the same time, the discussion has continued, new folks have joined; some regulars have fallen away, and the site and community has continued to thrive and remained stable in the boom and bust world of the internet.
Here's to another 25 years. Thanks Dave - it was, and continues to be, great fun.
