Being new to this forum stuff, can anyone tell me how the heck stars appeared by my name!

IHMO, it's a pretty stupid feature of the message board which is subject to a lot of abuse. It's a rating of your posts by one or more users. To rate a user, click on their name in their post. The link will take you to the public home page of the user where you can rate them.

FWIW, I just bumped you up as much as I could. I appreciate your local info on Laurel Mountain. Hope Laurel rises again this winter!

and you get another for learning to cloud ski w/o a lesson