Nice name there... illustrated daily in our house
My standard advice on this topic: You want the classic SLR experience. In Pentax K mount, that is the K series, the M series, the ME and the Program (in the UK I think these are SUPERs) series. ALL of them will do the job, though some of the ME era cameras don't have enough manual controls. And sure, include the (non program) Ricoh cameras in your list.
What you do is let kismet happen. You're looking for condition, price and a good seller. Whichever model falls into your hands is the one for you. It really doesn't matter too much!
The reason I say that is this: you will learn the camera, see how you like film shooting, etc. Then based on your experience with model X, you get a sense of what you want that's different. And, if you get into film at all, and if you continue to hang out at places like this one, you
will end up buying another camera. THAT camera is where the GAS really starts, as you can daydream seriously about features, looks, performance, relative merits between the early and late variant, and so on.