We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Tim W saying
something like:

Yes - I appreciate that. Breaks my heart though when people (like my missus)
are put off joining because the procedures are so over complicated and
unreliable. There must be a lot of people who tried to join who gave up, at
least with a couple of my local ones...

One of my Freecycle groups made a bid for independence and set up on
their own. Problem was, the admins of the new group were impatient and
arrogant arseholes, so sunk without trace after a couple of months.
Example, they sent a very snotty email if you expressed interest and
then didn't sign up pronto, like within three days and you got another
snotty email after that. As far as I was concerned, they could go
swivel, as I suspect many others thought, too.