The first two gigs…..

I haven't written a review about either of the two shows yet, to be honest after the first show i was totally speechless and lost for words!! i didn't even know where on earth to begin. Then lasts nights show being even better than the first blew me away even more!!

Its obvious from watching two shows so far that this show WILL change as the tour goes along, Rogers known for this and even last night there were a few differences in the production of it.

The first night Michael and i spotted a homeless guy with a shopping cart in the venue, a security guy was following him and ushering him out of the venue,or at least we thought he was!! I don't really want to give any spoilers away on here yet.

I will probably start typing a few reviews after seeing the three Chicago shows and being able to get my head round the whole production! i will say this though, if you haven't got a ticket and you miss this show then your missing THE best show of your life, i have never seen anything like it in my life and even though I'm seeing this show 52 times i knew from the second i saw the first one i wasn't going to get bored once during the tour and I'm going to be seeing different things in the production every night!! The amount of work Roger has put into this show is incredible, he has thought of every little thing and it all just works so well!!

Bob and Eryn after their front row experience on the opening night!:

Me and Andy’s wife Sheila  after the opening night show:

 

A few of us at the bar after the opening show:

Thursday………….

Didn't do much yesterday during the day, woke around 9am and it was pissing down with rain. I went for a drive around Toronto for a couple of hours and drove the road that follows the lake for 30 miles or so. I packed my cases into the car when i got back and drove downtown to park up as i would be driving to Gravenhurst (about 150 miles north of Toronto) for a couple of nights straight after the show.

Met up with everyone at Casey's bar around 5:30 and we all had a good chat, met a few new people and everyone else who was there the night before. My friend Zo went to the arena around 3pm to catch Roger going in for sound check ,30 minutes after he got there Roger arrived and signed his Wall album cover for him! he was pretty pleased. My good friend Joe arrived at Casey's and handed me a little envelope that he wanted me to have, in it was a small card thanking me for running the Roger Waters message board for all the years and a little something to help keep it going. I cant thank you enough Joe, your a great friend and that little note on the card meant a lot to me, cheers.

After the show i ran straight out to the parking lot and set off in the car, i was on the road within 5 mins of the shows ending and beat all the traffic leaving the venue. The 2 hour drive up to Gravenhurst went ok although i was pretty tired when i got within 10 miles of my hotel and my head started nodding at the wheel, not a god thing! I had been warned by JP to look out for Moose on the road, i didn't see a thing on the drive up and I'm sure he was just trying to scare me a little. I arrived at the hotel around 12:30am and crashed into bed within minutes of arriving, i woke around 7 this morning so the jetlags getting a bit better, hopefully by early next week I'll be on North American time.

Gravenhurst Ontario….

Where i am today (click on the map to zoom in and out):

Woke up to the following this morning, take from the balcony of my hotel. Beautiful place here, will post more about the last couple of shows, yesterday and today later on, meanwhile enjoy the pics and videos below:

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What i woke up to this morning:

Sunrise and lake Muskoka:

Run, run, run, run…………

Managed to get a 30 minute run in the morning, i LOVE running in the early morning but when I'm at home i just don't have the energy to do it so early so today i got the best of both worlds. Due to the time difference i ran at 8am Toronto time but it was 1pm UK time therefore i was wide awake and had a lot more energy than i do when i first wake up at home. I'd looked on Google maps and saw there was a park about mile down the road that had a running track in it. Ran to the park, did a couple of laps around the track and then headed back to the house.

Bobs little boy Thomas is 16 months old and adorable! he was a little apprehensive of me when i first arrived and very shy, however as the days gone by he’s got used to me and he sat on the sofa yesterday morning with me playing with my cell phone and camera and saying “hello” into the phone. Bob and his family have just got back from a weeks vacation where Thomas got hold of Eryn’s (Bobs wife) blackberry and mistakenly dialled 911 and called the emergency services!! by the time Bob and Eryn had realised the women on the end of the line was on the phone to the local police telling them she could hear people talking but was getting no response! they actually tracked the phones signal and sent a cop to their vacation rental just to check everything was ok! Here's Thomas getting ready for the show!! (he didn't go really this was just his way of welcoming Roger to Toronto)

             

Bob and i got the subway downtown and met up with Suzanne, Philippe, Michael, Jens, Thomas and Mike around 12 noon at the CN Tower. Few facts about the CN Tower

The ride up the tower was about 60 second, lift had a glass door so you were able to see out as we got higher, the ride up just seemed never ending.

You can imagine what the view from the top was like but just in case you cant i made a panorama shot made up of  three smaller pictures, (click on the image to see the larger version)

They have one of those glass floors at the top that your able to walk on, all there is between you and the street below is a few inch thick piece of glass! Mike was real dubious about standing on it till i proved to him it was safe by jumping up and down on the glass (then  later in the day Bob told us about the following story about a local Toronto lawyer!) Man falls through glass wall!!

Click on the link below to see a few shots from the CN Tower trip:

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After the CN tower we walked to the Micro Brewery across the street then headed up into town to find somewhere to eat. It was now about 2:30pm and we were due to meet up with everyone else at around 5pm at Casey's bar just round the corner from the venue. We ate at Jack Astor's across the street from the meet up bar, the talk over lunch was about the up and coming show in a few hours time. Bob and most of the others had stayed away from any spoilers online about the show, id seen a couple of things but nothing that would really spoil the show. (I'm so pleased we all did this as you’ll find out in my next post this definitely made the show so much more of a surprise!)

Michael, Suzanne, Mike and Bob headed back to freshen up for the show while Jens, Thomas, Philippe and i sat there till around 4:30 speculating what to expect from Roger in a few hours time!

We walked over to Casey's after lunch and the rest of the people started arriving around 5ish. It was fantastic to see friends who i hadn't seen since being in Toronto 2006, Doug, Elliot, Maria, Zo just to name a few, it was as though it had only been a couple of days since we’d seen each other even though it had been 4 years.  We had all become friends through being online and fans of Rogers music and then met up in person at shows around the world, i would call these people my very best friends and some of them I've known for over 10 years, some that i met only yesterday i knew would be friends for the next 10 years!

We all had a few drinks on the patio area and the 90 minutes or so we were there just seemed to fly by so quickly, around 6:30 we all made our way down to the venue and joined the hundreds of people heading down for the show, On the last tour i managed to get a picture of me outside each venue, I'm going to try do the same again, hopefully I'll remember before each gig.

Below, few of us walking to the show and me looking a touch jetlagged outside the ACC

   

Tuesday nights dinner….

Last night about 25 of us met up for dinner in Greek town, some of us had met before in 2006 when we were here for Rogers shows and some of us had known each other over 10 years, all through being fans of Rogers music.

My friends Gail and Joe who had flow in from Phoenix came over to the UK for Rogers 2002 tour, Bob and Andy had done the same but Bob being a huge Dave Gilmour fan had also flown over for some Gilmour shows 3 or 4 years ago and of course for Live 8 in 2005. Philippe, Jens and i had travelled extensively through Europe in 2002 together plus seen shows all over the world in together over the last 10 years. It was great to meet up with everyone again, i guess were all there for the same thing and relate to the same thoughts we all have about Rogers shows and the music which is why we all get along so well together, kind of hard to explain but the people that “get it” will understand what i mean.

Click on pics below for more images from last nights dinner.

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By the time we all left the restaurant it was going up to midnight and most of us that had flown in that day (Jens and Thomas from Copenhagen, Philippe from Belgium and Anders and his friend from Sweden ) had been up for 24 hours and were starting to feel the jetlag creep in. Just for the record, i had two Long Island Iced tea’s, these will probably be the last and only ones I'll have while I'm over here (seriously) as most people know, i drink very little at all and it wouldn't bother me if alcohol disappeared off the earth tomorrow!

 

Its now about 8am Wednesday morning, woke up a few times in the night but managed to get back to sleep for a few hours, cant wait till I'm on North American time though, hopefully shouldn't take more than a week or so.

I'm gonna get up and go for a run then get some breakfast with Bob, apart from the obvious tonight I'm not sure what's planned for today, there's a few people due to fly in today that we wont see till tonight, Elliot's coming in from New York, Maria is driving over from Montreal and my good friend Zo is driving over from Quebec,  but were all kind of separated and staying in different places around Toronto. Bobs off work for the next 3 days so i think were driving downtown to see a few sites and few of us will probably meet up for lunch and then were all meeting up in a  bar before the first show tonight at 5pm

 

 

Toronto, record hunting……

Flight was good, watched a few TV shows on my laptop and fell asleep for an hour, by the time i woke up there was 30 minutes to landing.

My friend Bob had arranged for his friend Andy to pick me up from the airport but first i got  a second questioning at Canadian Immigration and also got pulled over at customs to open my bag, they were all very polite and i have to say nowhere near as stern as US custom!

Just as i walked out of the airport Andy arrived and drove me over to Bobs house where I'm staying for the next couple of nights. I dropped my bags and headed downtown into Toronto on the subway, took this picture for Lauren as i was on my way, i know there's nothing more she likes than a good drug store, lol :)

 

Laurens dad Mike has been building his collection of vinyl singles for a while and is planning on getting a jukebox for them all soon. He’d given me a list of singles he’d seen at a record store in Toronto that I'd found online and told him about. There were about a dozen singles on the list and i figured I'd just call in, pick them out and mail them back home to him. What i didn't figure on was seeing the best part of 35, 000 singles!!! Rock, Pop, Country, soul, anything and everything you could think of! 

 

I had a word with the guy in the store and asked him if i could leave him the list and come back in half an hour to pick them up, if only it was that easy! he told me where to look and to let him know if there were any i couldn't find, after 25 minutes of searching through boxes id found three! He said not to worry and took me to an upstairs room that had about twice the amount again as downstairs!!

I counted 32 of these racks all full of singles!

Another hour upstairs  and id managed to find them all with the exception of four, actually they didn't have them as i did find the correct section and band label for where they should be but they just didn't have them. After all the above when it came to looking for the single i want to put on the jukebox they didn't have it!

I took the subway back to Bobs and packaged the records to mail back to the UK, am just sat here waiting for Bob to come home after work, then  just chilling out for a couple of hours before meeting up with Jens, Philippe, Gail, Joe, Suzanne and 20 other friends for a meal out in Greek town tonight

Day 1

5:30am, Laurens dad Mike picked me up at home, i loaded my case into the car,  said goodbye to Lauren and we started the drive to Heathrow. The second we set off a track from Rocky Erikson comes over the stereo in Mikes car and we both here the lyrics “ oh my darling im sorry im leaving you" or something simlar to that. We both bursted out laughing, i thought Mike had queued up the track as a laugh but he hadn't!,  as i looked out of the window i saw Lauren standing in the doorway in her pink dressing gown waving goodbye! awww
Arrived at Heathrow around 5:45 and by 6am i was checked in, bags dropped, exit row seat secured and i was in the lounge eating breakfast!  two little cheese and a few crackers
Heathrow terminal 3, the first of many airports I'm gonna be going through in the next 3 months!

One day to go!!

"Taxi" to the airport has been booked for 5:30am, clothes are packed, spending the whole day with Lauren today before i leave tomorrow.Two days to go till i see the following!

4 days to go.....

So, here it is! 4 days to go and I leave for the US and Canada for 93 days!

When the show dates were first released and I sat down and looked through the schedule I though NO WAY am I going to be able to travel round and see every show of the North American tour, I looked at flights, trains, cars and even ferry's but it just looked like it was going to be impossible to plan and make all the dates on time.

The first thing I wanted to do was book all my travel plans.  Hotels, staying with friend etc could be booked later on.

After breaking the tour down into 3 monthly sections I stated to look a little bit closer and thought this thing COULD actually work! Of course it could, Roger and the band are doing it!  Mmmmmm they have the luxury of a private jet, something I was not going to have unless those Nigerian scammers would finally send me the $14 million they keep telling me I‘ve been awarded! After realising I was going to have to without the Nigerians help I started to plan flights for the shows that were the farthest apart.

The first month of the tour could have been done with a rental car all the way and I could have driven to each show without any flights at all, I didn’t just want to be driving non stop from show to show and not having any time to hang out with friends and arriving at places dead on my feet just to make sure I hit every show for the sake of it! Fortunately in the good old US of A there’s some great budget airline companies and some excellent connections between cities.

 

14^th September to 15^th October, 18 shows in 31 days

The first month was pretty straight forward and after a few plans and then a few changes its worked out like this:

Fly London to Toronto

Fly Toronto to Chicago

Fly Chicago to Cleveland

Drive to Pittsburgh

Drive to Cleveland

Drive to Pittsburgh

Fly Pittsburgh to Boston

Fly Boston to New York

Drive to Buffalo

Drive to Washington DC

Drive to Long Island

Drive to Hartford

Drive to Newark.

I’ve always been the type of person that likes to plan things, get things booked (and even paid for) well in advance, it’s just the way I am, I LOVE the planning aspect of things and by booking things so far in advance (April/May of this year) I was able to get some great deals on flights.

Due to Rogers last minute addition of four extra shows I’m not going to be seeing the 4^th show in Chicago, yeh im a bit disappointed but my plans were already booked and I would have lost out on a non cancellable flight and car rental, what’s one show out of 52! though  (No comments that this will be the show which Gilmour shows up at please)

So with the above all sorted out I moved on to the 2^nd section.

16^th October to 11^th November, 14 shows in 26 days

Getting from Newark to Ottawa, Canada for the next day by car could have been done but I booked a flight instead. Bob and Andy my friends from Toronto would be picking me up in Ottawa and after seeing the show there we’d be driving on to Montreal together. This leg of the tour had a few “long hauls” in it which included:

Montreal to Columbus (720 miles plus crossing from Canada to the USA)

Detroit to Omaha (750 miles)

Omaha to Kansas City via St Paul and St Louis (1230 miles)

Kansas City to New Jersey (1120 miles)

One thing I had to try avoid was the drop off fees that car rental companies charge, these can be more than the actual car rental cost! Therefore I had to return the cars back in the same state (sometimes the same city)  unless I was able to find a rental company that didn’t charge them! I found ebookers online which was one of the only companies that actually showed you the fee’s for one way rentals and furthermore a lot of the prices either included these fees or were waived totally! This became invaluable when booking my cars. 

There was no way i could rent a car in Canada and drop if off in the USA so a flight from Montreal to Columbus was a given. However prices of flights made me book the flight into Cleveland where I’d pick up a rental car and then drive to Columbus and the rest of the journey, then drop it off in Kansas City before flying on to Newark. So my plans for the 2^nd section look like this:

Fly Newark to Ottawa

Drive to Montreal

Fly Montreal to Cleveland

Drive to Columbus

Drive to Detroit

Drive to Omaha (longest drive of the trip but I have 2 days to do it)

Drive to St Paul

Drive to St Louis

Drive to Kansas City

Fly Kansas City to New York

I was 2/3^rd the way through and the trip was coming together now.

12^th November to 15^th December, 19 show in 33 days

This leg of the tour had a few more “long hauls” in than the other two, I would have to book a few more flights if I were to see the shows.

Ft Lauderdale (990 miles)

Atlanta to Houston (800 miles)

Dallas to Denver (800 miles)

Denver to Las Vegas (750 miles)

Los Angeles to Oakland (350 miles)

Back to Los Angeles (350 miles)

San Jose to Vancouver (981 miles)

Tacoma to Anaheim (1250 miles)

Most of the above I booked flights for and booked rental cars in between, the only one way drop off I was unable to avoid was picking up in Ft Lauderdale and dropping off in Atlanta, I looked all which ways to try avoid this but it just wasn’t possible so I booked the car with a $100 drop off fee. 

The rest was pretty straight forward apart from a show that was added later on  in Oakland. Most of my plans had been booked by the time this show was announced and this show was in the middle of 3 Los Angeles shows, he would play 2 shows in LA, then one in Oakland and then back to LA for a 3^rd show! Again thank heavens for cheap airlines and I booked a flight up to Oakland for the one night and back to LA the next morning, only to then have to drive back up to San Jose 2 days later!

So with the 3^rd and final months plans all sorted it looks a little like this:

Fly Philadelphia to Ft Lauderdale

Drive to Tampa

Drive to Atlanta

Fly Atlanta to Houston

Drive to Dallas

Fly Dallas to Denver

Fly Denver to Las Vegas

Drive to phoenix

Dive to Los Angeles

Fly LA to Oakland

Fly Oakland to LA

Drive to San Jose

Fly San Francisco to Seattle

Drive to Vancouver

Drive to Tacoma

Fly Seattle to Anaheim

Fly LA to London

Originally there were a few things I was going to do travel wise which I didn’t in the end due to friends inviting me places along the way and me deciding to do those instead of what I’d originally planned. I’ll write about these as I go along and get to the places. Whilst I really am looking forward to seeing friends, the travelling and seeing the shows I'm also going to miss home and the people I'm leaving behind for 12 weeks who without their love and understanding this trip wouldn’t be possible.

OK, off to start packing for Summer, Autumn and Winter all in one case!

Interactive map of my travels part 1

View Roger Waters "The Wall" USA & Canada 2010 tour in a larger map