Randy and I went to Canada for Roger’s first two shows of his 2007 Tour. This is gonna be a long post, so pull up a chair.

We got up at 3:30 a.m. on Friday and headed to the Abilene airport in plenty of time to make our 5:40 departure flight, only to find there was already a line at the counter. Uh-oh, not good. This trip wouldn’t have happened at all without the persistence and determination of the Abilene ticket agent, Michelle. I was in tears before she finally called a higher-up on the phone after 45 minutes of trying to juggle our itinerary. Finally we were able to leave Abilene about 8:30 a.m. After many delays and glitches due to storms in DFW the night before resulting in: running through airports, almost getting bumped, itinerary changing, and other mishaps, we made it.

We arrived at the Fallsview Casino Resort at about 6 pm Ontario time. The Hilton, where we were staying, was directly across the street with a glass walkway joining the two hotels. We were too late for soundcheck but went to the Avalon Ballroom to get our passes for after the show. (It’s really difficult to get this in any kind of chronological order because so much happened.) We didn’t have tickets, so about 30 minutes before the show I happened to spot one of Roger’s managers, Linda, inside the showroom and as soon as she saw me, she came up and gave me a long, tight hug. She went to procure the tickets for us, since I jokingly told her we were new to this kind of thing. We were in the 5th row, dead center right in front of Roger for Friday night’s performance.

Before the show, I saw a very familiar face in the audience. It was Jim Shumuntz from Buffalo, NY, who used to be a regular chatter when I first started coming to Roger’s site. I introduced myself and he gave me a big hug. He offered to buy us dinner the following day, but I knew we wouldn’t have much time. I regret that we didn’t get to meet up again over the weekend because it was such a pleasure seeing him in person at long last.

The show started on time at 9 pm. Roger’s voice was in great form, as always. He mentioned that since he hadn’t sung these songs in about 2 months, he was happy to be doing them again…and that he hoped he wouldn’t forget the words. LOL Randy tried to take photos, but the Casino staff asked him to put the camera away. Randy shooed one of them away the first time with his backstage laminate but the second staffer, a supervisor, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He did manage to get 7 shots, which you see in the slideshow. I was disappointed by this, but everything else more than made up for it.

After Friday’s performance, we went backstage and were directed to the Hospitality Room, laden with goodies. Linda came in and told us and a few other fans who were back there (maybe 6 others) that Roger had to do a casino meet and greet first. Linda then came in and got us one at a time (or a couple, in our case) to go into Roger’s dressing room.

When it was our turn, Linda escorted us in and I saw Roger’s smiling face immediately. I walked up to him, we hugged and while in mid-hug I told him, “Thank you for having us here.” I stepped back and held both of his hands in mine and said, “You are such a blessing to me.” I was very shy and nervous and had a hard time looking directly at him. Roger said “You’re the one I’m most excited about being here tonight.” Awwwww!!

After Friday’s show, Randy and I went into the Casino and had a couple of beers to celebrate and relax. Didn’t have any money to gamble with so we walked around the maze of this gorgeous casino like a couple of sharks who’ll die if they quit swimming. We walked back to the Hilton about 1 a.m.

Saturday morning, Randy and I got up about 8:00 a.m., feeling pretty rotten because we didn’t have anything for dinner except for the aforementioned beer. My head was splitting. We had breakfast at the “Grand Buffet” where Randy took a photo of the Falls through one of the windows. Again, he was told nicely to put the camera away. They really have a problem with photos, even when you’re not in the casino proper.

Afterward, we walked a short distance down to the Falls. What an incredible, powerful, beautiful sight. We even took a small video clip. God is amazing!

Then we decided to walk down towards Lundy Lane, which had been recommended to us. After many blocks of uphill climbing, we didn’t see anything that impressed us (I guess we didn’t go far enough?) and our legs were aching, so we turned around and went back the way we came. We were both exhausted and had no money to do much of anything, so we went up to our room on the 9th floor only to find that the housekeeping staff were just getting to us. Sigh. Oh, and on the way up we got into the elevator and Aaron and his wife were in there. She is so sweet, classy and pretty…they are obviously well matched. He asked if we were going to be there again that night and we told him we would. They were staying on our floor, at the other end of the hall.

We sat down by the elevators while our room was being cleaned, and once we were finally in there, we both crawled onto the bed and dozed off for about an hour.

I had the opportunity to spend about 45 minutes with Roger and Linda on Saturday and he graciously allowed us to take some photos during that time. What a wonderful person he is, although I made a whole lot of silly comments due to my nerves being completely shot!

On Saturday night, we ended up sitting next to Aaron’s wife on the 5th row, far right side, right where Aaron plays. What a treat! The Saturday show was focused, tight, forceful and was full of humor. I have never seen a better performance out of both Roger and Aaron. Roger was cutting up with the crowd and Aaron all night, keeping us all in stitches! It was totally different. He even made up silly lyrics to “Along Came Mary” after he finished the actual song. He was asking Canadians what the big deal was about Tim Horton’s, which is a donut/coffee shop with locations all over Canada. He said he had tried everything on the menu and he just didn’t quite get it. He then said, “I shouldn’t do this but I wrote a little song about it.” He started the melody line to Along Came Mary again, and sang, “Was alone when I found Tim Horton…met a girl there and we went courtin’….” (go ahead, sing it so you can hear what that must have sounded like! ROFL!) The audience roared!

The set lists were identical, except on Saturday night he didn’t do “It’s Raining Again” as he did on Friday. Don’t know why. Maybe it was too melancholy for his sudden silly mood. Regardless, both shows were awesome…and Aaron is playing even more instruments (such as tin whistle on Along Came Mary) than he did during the last tour. What a talent and an asset as well as a fun-loving guy! Roger chose well.

We went backstage again, but I quickly made the decision not to delay Roger after the show again after all the time he had already sacrificed for us. I hugged Linda, thanked her profusely and told her we were taking off.

We walked back to the Hilton where we had a nightcap in the lobby bar. What a weekend!

The next day (Sunday) was spent in airports and planes. We arrived home exhausted but happy, with memories that will last us a lifetime!