We started out in Pontiac, Michigan in 1973. I was working with Andy Anderson at Anderson's Motor Sales on his ad program (I was the ad manager at the local newspaper) and while waiting to see him sat on a couple of bikes in the showroom. Two week's later my wife and I rolled out of there with two Honda CB 360T's. Andy's part of the deal was to also teach us to ride so we wheeled round his back lot for a few hours to get a sense of comfort before having them delivered home.
We had a vacant lot next door to our home and that became our learning track for a few weeks before we ventured on the road. Once we felt street-ready we added fairings, side bags, CB's (23 channel back in those days) and a few other farkles. Penny even wrote an article for Touring Bike Magazine about the challenges of being a lady biker in the early 70's.
From there we moved on to matching Suzuki GS 1000's nicely dressed out. My next was the first Honda Aspencade delivered in Ohio in late 1981. Lot's of different iron from there including an AMF Harley that is best forgotten.... more Suzukis....some Yamahas, a Valkyrie Interstate for me, a triked Burgman for her..... and then..... Boom! Her first ride on a Can Am RT! It is hard to negotiate a price when your wife wants to get it out the door and ride.
Finally I joined the fun with a 2011 RT to go with her 2010 RT. Now we plan to put about 30,000 miles or so (we're over half way there) on the 2012's and perhaps by 2015 we'll be ready to change again.
We ride because we can and we hope we can for a long, long time to come.