Mark L. Rivers

[BonzaiJoe]

After some years, I am beginning to feel curious about what kind of person you are? You post almost only in racing subforums and about replays and tricks, but never in chat forums!
Where in Italy are you from? What do you like to do when you don't play Stunts, what's do you work with and do you have kids? Would you like to come to WSM someday?
Fill us in! You are a top pipsqueak and strong community member, we need to feel like you're our friend

Cheers!

[CTG]

After some years, I am beginning to feel curious about what kind of person you are? You post almost only in racing subforums and about replays and tricks, but never in chat forums!
Where in Italy are you from? What do you like to do when you don't play Stunts, what's do you work with and do you have kids? Would you like to come to WSM someday?
Fill us in! You are a top pipsqueak and strong community member, we need to feel like you're our friend

Cheers!

Argammon's ghost.

Kidding. Or not.

[Mark L. Rivers]

First of all, thanks to have described me a top driver. It's a pleasure hear it, above all from a great champion as you are. Even if I sincerely think there's a quite high number of drivers stronger than me.

About my presence in the community, well, I have to say that when I joined almost three years ago in Stunts racing on the web, I have thought not to be so active in the Forum. Better, for several months I had not register myself on it, and I did it only when I had to communicate with a driver about a result.

As I told Krys (at spring 2006) when he for the first time invited me to join in his team, my life is really busy. I'm almost 40 years old and I work full-time with quite heavy responsabilities in a customer service center in Milan. Moreover, with my wife and many other friends I'm engaged in a voluntary service with a local community that absorbs a large part of our time. So I succeed to find some time to race in very short moments of the week (except during my holidays, obviously if I'm at home...), dividing also my free time between bicycle, music and, sure, Stunts.
I told Krys that all this would have made impossible for me joining in another community, even if on the web, specifying that for joining I consider exchanging 360 degrees thoughts, cultivating friendships, having a sort of parallel life in add to all the rest.
So, joining in a community is for me a thing that demands a lot of time, absorbing hours and hours that I really have not. And I don't like to make the things half and half, thinking also that I will have less and less free time to spend.

I know very well that replying in many topics mean creating many links with other members and this unavoidably would increase the time I should spend to express my thoughts, so not to appear disinterested or ungentle. Or, more probably, this would increase my wish to express my thoughts, detracting a lot of time from my family, friends and also from other activities, really important for others.
Moreover, my English is not very fluent and I have to dedicate more time than many others to formulate my phrases so to express exactly what I want to say.

In order of all this, I set up my join to Stunts world on the web as pure racing, the reason that brought me to discover this little world. I like the taste of the challenge, and the races in almost all sports are really a passion for me.
So I like to consider all you as fellows as it would be possible to meet if we were opponents in a real sport. Not very much time for relationships out of the race, but a sane and fair challenge on the tracks, a thing that could bring to appreciate each other for our ability. But not only this.
Because this little world is a lot more special than we could find in whatever other context. Because what brought to encountered us has been the passion for something special, the passion for a game as there's not the same.

Retrieving the message I sent to Krys when I told him about my position on community, I want to report some words, thinking I couldn't find better ones to express what I think about this game:

"I always liked to play with car toys. And since 1982, I always played with car pc-games (maybe the first was "Pole Position" with my Commodore 64.....). Then Stunts arrived and it has been a great love which still brings me to play when I can.
It's an historical game, a game without violence, weapons, cruelty and every kind of iniquities which are present in many actual games. Its semplicity and design, its imperfections, make it at my eyes like a pure and genuine game, like a teddybear, a doll or tinplate truck, an old toy able to transmit the good sensations about a time which won't come back.
Stunts is not a way of life for me, but a way to extend, even if only for short periods, my youth and the life of the boy inside me, a temporary breakaway from the wonted responsabilities of the life, like a recreation period in the life's school.
Stunts racing on the web has renovated in me the desire not to forget this wonderful game and to extend its life permitting to others to keep attached to a sane game, without follow the decadent line of the actual games, without follow the decadent line of the world."


I think that Stunts is a game that make all of us (maybe not really all of us, but sure someone of us) linked by a particular way to see the life, appreciating the past, the simplicity, cultivating the children inside us, independently from our age. This, I think, makes so special this community.

And even if I think I'll never have the possibility to participate in a WSM, I'm happy to having this experience "fighting" with you in this absolutely extraordinary little great world.

[AbuRaf70]

Me siento identificado con todo lo que expresa Mark...

A esa edad, 40 años, se tienen muchos compromisos que cumplir...  trabajo, familia, relaciones sociales, etc.

Particularmente, me hubiese sido imposible participar de carreras de Stunts cuando trabajaba ya que lleva mucho tiempo...  cuando me jubilé y teniendo 70 años, pude integrarme a esta tan hermosa comunidad que practica el Stunts, que como dice Mark, no tiene nada de violencia, sino de saludable ingenio para ir mejorando día tras día...

Ojalá dure mucho tiempo más, para seguir disfrutando de ella...

[JTK]

I'm almost 40 years old (...)

Aah - another "Oldie". You, Krys and me should join the first 40s Club on Stunts Community in some years (in two for me, actually).

[Chulk]

I'm almost 40 years old (...)

Aah - another "Oldie". You, Krys and me should join the first 40s Club on Stunts Community in some years (in two for me, actually).

Aburaf will be alone in his club for a long time...

[AbuRaf70]

Lo bueno del Stunts, es que Uds. me aceptan "en sus clubes", no importando mi edad...

[JTK]

 

So here's the ranking:

1. AbuRaf70

2. KrysTOFF, Mark L. Rivers, JTK

5. the rest

[CTG]

Daffy Duck is already an adult (June 1994)!

It's so weird to realize that I am already older than JTK was when he started to play in competitions.

[Chulk]

Daffy Duck is already an adult (June 1994)!

It's so weird to realize that I am already older than JTK was when he started to play in competitions.

You're old!!!

[CTG]

Daffy Duck is already an adult (June 1994)!

It's so weird to realize that I am already older than JTK was when he started to play in competitions.

You're old!!!

Yes... 

[Chulk]

After I wrote that I started thinking... from which age on do we consider people 'old'?

[CTG]

Several years ago I though the parts of life can be easily separated: 0-30 is young, 30-60 could be called as middle age, over 60 is old. Now, close to 30... well... I had to reconsider this. On one hand, somebody can be a big child even at the age of 50 (just think on the horny Frenchman). On the other hand, I feel myself too old for my real age because of my bad physical and psychological condition. However, my behaviour is usually childish.

You mustn't say a certain age for getting old.

[JTK]

Krys ist not 50!! (Yet)!!!

[CTG]

Krys ist not 50!! (Yet)!!!

But getting closer and closer...