In order to help manage spammers, some of the functions won't be available until you have posted for a while, and our software recognizes you.
Look around the forum. You can probably find several threads that you have a comment on within just a little while. You can introduce yourself in our New members forum, and tell us a little about you. You might want to find your state thread in Where am I? Where are You? It won't take long -- I don't actually know the number -- perhaps 20 posts.
And welcome to our forum!