Making friends is all part of it. In many ways it's pretty easy as you're likeminded, which is pretty cool.
Sometimes the friendship thing can outweigh the swinging. For example I met a really nice lady from north Notts and we had a great time together. But since then we've lost touch (her personal circumstances have changed I guess) which is cool except I wish we could have still kept in touch as friends....we had some good heart to heart talks about life in a so called space age.