I flew a Grob 115 when I was working in LA after grad school. The Point Vicente Lighthouse was a local landmark.
• In college I flew a Robin R2160 for a year or so. Similar to the Grob but aerobatic, it had a lot of little design things (e.g. identical and adjacent carb heat and mixture knobs, no way to visually confirm fuel level) and some flying things (poor pitch damping at low speeds) that got in the way of me really liking the plane.
• Robinson R44. I worked at the factory as a design engineer for a year and a half after grad school.
• Great Lakes 2T-1A-2 N6247L. My primary aerobatics trainer was N6247L, a Great Lakes biplane with full inverted systems, which I flew throughout the summer of '98. There's no substitute for learning acro in an open cockpit biplane!
• Aviat Pitts S-2C N4HV. I did my first advanced acro training in N4HV, the first production Pitts S-2C (still had that new-airplane smell!)