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After traveling to so many out-of-town concerts over the years I’ve slept on my fair share of couches, air mattresses, and spare beds and all of them in abodes owned or rented by friends and acquaintances who always seemed happy to host a wayfaring music nomad or two. Of course a good many of those nights were spent south of the border, in the United States of America.
Being so consistently on the receiving end of such welcoming good cheer has caused me to long for the opportunity to pay back into the karmic couch-surf, and though I have hosted many friends as they breezed through Ottawa the vast, vast majority of them have been Canadian. Put quite simply, the bands I tend to chase around the States don’t play in Canada very often (if ever) so there isn’t much motivation for my American friends to cross the border. And let’s face it: Americans overwhelmingly don’t have passports* and they rarely travel abroad.
But on April 18th, 2010 m’lady and I finally got our payback opportunity when we hosted an American friend who happened to be a big hockey fan; particularly of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Even more particularly: She was a fan of Penguin number 25, Maxime Talbot (C). Like, an eyes squished closed and stomping her feet in excitement sort of fan.
Sure it wasn’t the “omigod, I can’t believe Phish is miraculously playing in Ottawa and we have twenty-three people camped in our backyard for the weekend” sort of gathering I had always daydreamed of, but it was a start. And it was fun.
It was also the first round of the playoffs; game three. The Sens lost the game 4-2 and they would go on to lose the series by the same margin, so good news for our guest.
Our friend would attempt to return the favour when she came into possession of free tickets to a Canadiens game in Montreal. We joined her for that but were disappointed to find that we inadvertently had tickets in the handicapped section and were promptly shown the door. M’lady and I ended up watching the game from our hotel room whilst our friend spent the evening trying to re-enter the arena (several times, as it would turn out).
*According to the State Department, as of 2016 just 36% of Americans held passports, compared to 60% of Canadians and 75% for Brits and Australians. Which means that at least two-thirds of American citizens have little interest in (and no chance of) exploring the world beyond their own country, which I’m sure goes a long way to propagate their “greatest country in the world” myth. I can’t think of anyone I know in Canada that has never travelled abroad. But to each their own, eh?
Todd Man Out 