I come home from a round trip to Elyria to find a wife who is very pissed off. Yay.
What WAS CR in 2001? It was a place where the members of COFBA and Columbus DSM could plan places to meet and street race. Period. Instead of trolling each other's forums continually (which turned into some great threads, BTW), CR was created since 99% of us did not have a cell phone or other way to contact one another other than the internet.
Between us, friends of friends, etc, CR grew enormously and very quickly as there wasn't anything else like it representing what would eventually become the 15th largest city in the country, and largest city in Ohio.
That was 14 years ago. I daily drove an LT1 Camaro, had dark brown hair, had one child, lived in an apartment, and didn't have a fucking clue what I wanted out of life. The WTC had planes flown into them a couple months before, the internet was serious business, as mentioned above, most of us didn't have cell phones, and forums were the way to go.
So what changed? The world. Technology. You name it. Hell, the LS1 was fucking king of the streets, 11s were insanely fast for a street car, and now we have factory Hondas making 300hp, and 10-second production cars that are as comfortable to drive as they are fast. I now have gray hair, BTW
What hasn't changed is the core members and their personas of what makes CR, CR. Sure, we don't have all the same people around, people come, people go. We've had members go to prison, had them die, leave the hobby, you name it. Yet, here we still are, in some way or another.
Are we going to change who we are? No. Will we adapt? Probably. But CR is here for those that want to hang out, cars or not, and have friends that can have a common interest.
I could literally write a novel on my feelings, but I'll leave this here and people can take it as they please.