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Click "events" on the right hand bar on the home page... and then in the top right you'll see a button to quick search for future events.
As for distinguishing the difference... past events cannot have new attendees, so the interface does change for those.
But distinguishing in the UI... i.e. dimming the past event... is contentious. There's nothing to say that events in the past are inherently lower value to a community than new ones.
For example I created a Rider Down using an event... it would allow us to map and search them later.
Those are clearly important to people, and would only ever be past events. So should we dim them?
Without the obvious ability to dim things, it's hard to know how we might distinguish future events. But I think more useful is that you can find future events easily... and you can (now).
Looking at events - would it be possible in future that they are distinguishable by those that have already occurred and those that are yet to happen? I know this conflicts with the ranking where latest post is what pushes a thread up a page.