As a youngster I didn't have a car and I resided in a nice area to ride so I lived on the thing. Now, I have to make time. My experience has always been, the more you ride the more you enjoy riding. It has to do with comfort levels. My wife just took up riding about 5 years ago but she commutes to work every day unless it's snowing or pouring rain. She alternates between the nicest little black Bonnie you've ever seen and her KLR. She says she doesn't want to hurt their feelings. I think it has helped her become a great rider in 'just' 5 years. She always defers to my 40 years of riding but I think she rides as well as I do. She learned all my tricks before ever throwing a leg over her own bike.
This is just a personal thing but I'd recommend getting as much saddle time as possible before joining the parade. You have to be so vigilant against other peoples' mistakes it can take the fun out of it if you aren't in the right place psychologically.
I've never gotten the whole 30 bikes riding together thing myself. If I'm on the Parkway and find myself in a line of bikes I pull over and let them go by. I'll ride with one or two other bikes but that's it.
Motorcycles, airplanes, tigers, sex, submarines...I just think some things just aren't meant to be clustered together in large numbers.
