Pearl Jam at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto !!!

On Monday morning I awoke at 5 as I was so damn excited about traveling to Toronto to see Pearl Jam again. I know that everyone thinks I am some kind of a cougar-groupie, but it is so hard to make someone understand the importance of seeing the band you love playing in 2 cities that are less than a 3 hr drive from you! Especially when they only tour every two years! I could not miss Eddie and the boys, regardless of how I got to the shows. When I bought my tickets to these two shows back in April, I originally only planned on going to the Ottawa show with my friends Louise and Mike. Last time I traveled with them to the 2003 show at the Molson Amphitheatre, I invited my co-worker Robin to escort me. This time I offered my extra ticket to my buddy Shayne. I felt bad that I couldn't get more than 2 tickets per show so Steff (Shaynes bride) to go with us. This guilt somehow provoked me to buy tickets for the Toronto show after asking Robin if he wanted to go. I had made the rule that he was going to drive as I didn't need the stress of maneuvering around in downtown Toronto. Besides, he had been to the ACC a few times, so he knew the way there and the best place to park. For me, this was a win win situation.
So off we departed from work a bit late, and off to smog-town we traveled. It was nice to score some cheap gas on the way there; under a buck a litre is a bonus now a days. Once there, we had a hell of a time finding the will call wicket to pick up our fan club tickets. After walking around in a circle a few times, we finally got the tickets and went searching for a bite to eat before the show. Now imagine this building that is attached to Union Station at rush hour. There were people everywhere, and I swear there was a security guard located on every corner. Before I hid the camera I borrowed from work, I took this picture of a tasty piece of art:

As we stood in the lineup for the pat down before entering the concert, I noticed that this time around, the security guards were actually patting down the ladies. So I had to change my course of action and had to hide the large camera in a more secure spot! After I breezed through that, I felt like screaming HURRAY, but didn't want to cause attention. There were even MORE security guys inside the ACC than there was in union Station. It gave you a feeling of some sort of impending doom. But I am sure that Ed and the boys had requested beefed up security in a city of constant violence.
What a thrill it was to find that my tickets were in almost the same spot as the Ottawa show! We were sitting next to two ardent fans from Bay City Michigan. They were both feeling no pain and an entertaining conversation was started between us and the girls from Oakland California, who were sitting in front of us. We were all trying to figure out which song they band would open with. BettiVedder from California guessed correctly with her choice of Release. Hearing the opening notes of this beautiful song made me cry and I couldn't even hold the camera up to take a picture. It was like Ed had cast a spell on the entire audience. The 6 of us were all high-fiving each other as we all sang along with the opening tune.
I will not bore any of you with a pile of my pictures from this show, but I will show you the one where Ed was looking right at me AGAIN! :)

If anyone wants to see the rest of the published pictures, please go to : http://photobucket.com/albums/v294/cchristmas/Pearl%20Jam%20Toronto/

The rest of the concert flew by in a blur, but towards the end of it I had to go back and delete a bunch of pictures to make room for the guest who appeared on stage. As the band started into Rockin in the free world, I thought I saw Uncle Neil Young take the stage, instead I was delightfully surprised to see Bono from U2. SWEET! Bono thanked Ed for opening for him the night before; and that's when Ed's opening statement started making sense. After the first few songs, he said he wanted to thank U2 for opening for them tonight. Everyone giggled at the time and no one suspected to see Bono, with a white cowboy hat slide onto the stage at the end of the night. It was a very cool sight, especially due to the fact that the lights were up and this rare scene was in plain view for all to see.

I am unsure how many people were at the show, but the sound from the crtowd was almost deafening, even with my earplugs in. Here is a shot of a very small portion of the audience:

Once again, I was speechless on the way home. I crawled into bed sometime around 3:30 am and managed to make it to work the next day by 10am!