Satoshi walked freely amongst us then and answered our questions directly. I felt like I had discovered some secret club of cryptoanarchists. Posts were more like a few a day and it was easy to keep up with all the chatter. There must have been less than 100 members on the forum then.
Yeah, I really liked beeing part of that small bitcoin family we were.
I read all the new posts every day and there was this "all new, exciting" atmosphere around.
I kinda dislike seeing the forum spammed by all this let's say "less important posts" nowadays because back then it felt like listening to some technology-socialist-anarchist-liberalist gurus.
I'm glad Bitcoin is finding acceptance by many people now but it has definetly lost it's secret-elite-flavour.