U2 and a Brain Tumor - Part 1

It’s Friday night and sitting here at the Starbuck’s, in Toronto International Airport, almost seems like the whole last 3 days have been a dream and I just woke up.

Like any good road trip with your buddies, the main reason that you go turns out to be just one, in a series of events, which makes the whole thing memorable. Granted, seeing U2 is the reason we came and the most memorable event of the trip, but really that was just 4 hours out of a 50 hours stopover… not even 10% of the time. That being said, if KISS is the “World’s Hottest Band” then U2 is definitely the World’s Coolest! There was a lot of hype around the show and there was a lot of hype around the trip, they both lived up to reach beyond what I had expected.

I have been at a lot of concerts, and I have been at a lot of big concerts. One thing I now know…if you ever have the chance to be down on a field, looking up at the stage instead of down at it, with 62,000 people looking down on you… Take It!

The days leading up to the trip were really leaving me to expect nothing more than a great concert. Most of the guys I was going with all opted to stay out in the boonies and visit a friend while we were in Toronto and it looked like I was going to be stuck downtown, in the middle of everything (and in my opinion, the only reason to ever go to Toronto in the first place) by myself. Out of the 8 ticket holders, 2 guys lived there, 3 stayed in Scarberia and 3 stayed in the entertainment district, Bruce (a guy I barely knew a few days ago), the other Kevin (who I only go out with on the odd occasion) and me… if you count Achmed, I guess there were 4. When three business-minded guys get to consuming beers on a hot, sunny patio… well you just know that eventually an opportunity is going to come across the table that makes all the light bulbs go off at the same time and a potential business partnership is born. (if anything materializes out of that, you will all hear about it here)

To be honest, if it hadn’t been for the fact that a U2 concert was on my bucket list, I might have blown off the trip. Achmed was really acting up before I blew Dodge for a few days, plus the stress of waiting to plan my blind date with a nuclear reactor had, and still has, me on the constant edge of snapping. Throw all that in with the fact that I was staying in a strange city by myself for half of the trip, and I ended up going home early.

Over the years I have been on a lot of road trips with my friends and the one thing that they have always had in common was that the group always stayed together, ate together and did things together. This one was different, as we were all spread out all over Southern Ontario, each doing different things and just meeting at the show. That is not normally how I roll, and as it turned out, this trip eventually conformed to my kind of road trip anyway.

Wednesday morning I got a call from the Other Kevin, he and Bruce were hitting the pub scene for dinner and wanted to know if I was joining them. Well, it was more of a tell me what time they are going and we will all meet, Other Kevin knows me well enough to know that the answer was going to be yes regardless. When I landed I headed straight downtown; I hardly stayed at the airport long enough to say, “see ya latter”, to the guys I was on the plane with, they were all heading to Scarborough.

This is when it all got interesting. My plan had been to stay at the condo that my uncle keeps in Toronto for when he is there. To make a long story short, the last cousin who stayed there didn’t properly dispose of the keys and when I showed up I couldn’t get in. After a few phone calls, a couple of couriers and several hours of frustration, I eventually got in at LUNCH TIME the following day!!!

There was nothing I could do, so I went to the bar to meet Other Kevin and Bruce, with my luggage in tow. Luckily for me, I travel light on road trips; all I had was a carry-on… I still, however, got some strange looks when I showed up at the restaurant and walked past the hostess with a suitcase and said, “I am meeting some friends who are already here.” That was technically not really true. I knew I was meeting Other Kevin, but until I actually got to my table, I had no idea who Other Kevin’s ‘buddy’ was. Until that night Bruce was just one of the guys I knew to say ‘hi’ to at my Starbucks, as it turned out, we had a lot in common, particularly our propensity to live life and have fun!

I wasn’t even in my seat when I ordered my first beer and as soon as it came, I ordered my second. This proved to be a mistake… when you allowed for the time difference; it had been almost 12 hours since I ate! By the time my third pint was half gone, my dinner showed up, unfortunately 2-and-a-half pints on an empty stomach was too much to start the night with. When Justine came back to order more drinks, Other Kevin switched to rum-and-coke, Bruce switched to gin-and-tonic and when she looked at me, I just said, “I think I have had enough, I am a bit bloated and I can’t drink rum or I will be hung-over tomorrow.” Bruce piped up and said, “He will have a double gin-and-tonic also.” I had only ever seen this man at Starbucks, but I am sure he must have been my wingman in a previous life.

This was the pre-cursor of what let to be a great night out in a strange city where we saw a pretty good U2 cover band; met lots of interesting people and walked for, what felt like, 2 hours looking for a hotdog. Eventually we got pizza and I ended up “sleeping” at The Royal York. I wonder how many potentially homeless people end up crashing in a 5-star hotel?

One thing I love about being really on the go these days, is that it keeps my mind off Achmed, although not having a place to comfortably sleep probably didn’t help me any.

From Achmed and Me… Live Life!