Last summer, we were planning our first trip to New York City when I noticed that Green Day was serendipitously playing a free concert in Central Park on the last day of our planned visit and I was ecstatic. FREE concert? Free GREEN DAY concert? Free Green Day concert at SIX IN THE MORNING? Oh that has my name written all over it! And then, boo, covid changed our plans and we had to put off our NYC trip by a week. We had no problems changing any of our reservations, except we missed the opportunity to see the Green Day show.
And then Green Day was obviously so filled with regret over me not seeing them that they scheduled a show in Ottawa, almost exactly a year to the date after the Central Park show. So in this year of saying yes to boundary-pushing and comfort-zone stretching microadventures, I bought my first Bluesfest pass so I could go to the concert.
There are a zillion small reasons that I’ve never been to Bluesfest, Ottawa’s signature summer music festival. Twenty years ago it was because we had preschoolers and I was too exhausted to think let alone deal with festival crowds. More recently, it was because I wasn’t sure I had the stamina to stand through an entire concert but knew I’d hate sitting through one and hauling a chair around. And I was vaguely intimidated by figuring out all the related logistics. It certainly isn’t because of the music – music has been and is central to my life, and I used to go to all sorts of concerts large and small.
Although Simon is my usual concert partner, this time we divvied up a single 3-show pass with the expectation that Simon would be working the night of the Green Day show and would catch two other acts he wanted to see. I figured I would be able to find someone to tag along with, or I’d happily go by myself like I used to do when I sat on the Bank Street bridge at the old Lansdowne Park, as one did back in the 1990s. Conveniently, my good friend Annie was willing to be my date and sherpa for the Bluesfest experience.
The last hurdle was logistics. Bluesfest tickets come with free transit, so I imagined that it would be a straight shot from Barrhaven to Tunney’s to Lebreton and back after the concert. Except it wasn’t. What a mess of options, most of them an hour or longer in the commute for what’s usually a 30 minute drive. Getting there was easy but back was sketchy no matter which options I fed into the travel planner. I thought maybe parking at College Square would make it less complex but it made it worse.
In the end, I decided the Line 2 train was the best and quickest route, with no transfers but a 15 minute walk from Bayview. Hey, if I’m already anxious about standing for 2+ hours, we might as well add 3000 more steps to the mix, right? At the last minute, Simon was able to get his hands on a pass after all, so the plan shifted so that I would get a lift to the Limebank LRT station and take the train in, he would park at Tunney’s after his work shift ended, and we would meet at the concert and ride home together afterwards.
It was my first time riding the Line 2 train and I loved it! It’s a pleasant and quick jaunt through town, and so much more comfortable than the bus. By the time we got to Bayview station, the train was full of folks wearing Green Day concert tees, and we massed out of the train and onto the platform together. I followed the herd up the stairs and blinked in confusion when I found myself on the platform for the Line 1 train — when I had intended to walk to Lebreton Flats Park. More than a few folks around me had the same confused look, and we eventually made our way together out to the Trillium Pathway. If you’re going to walk a kilometre to a music festival along the river, I highly recommend you do it at around 6:30 pm on a perfect summer evening.
I loved everything about my commute – the train ride into town, the walk along the river, the camaraderie of being vaguely lost with other non-urban folks. It set the stage (pun intended) for a spectacular evening. Annie and I had enough time before the Green Day set to catch a bit of a few other acts, and to stand in an incredibly long line for a slice of unexpected good pizza. Simon arrived in time for us to work our way into the massive crowd and then disappeared again in search of his own friends.
Green Day was amazing! Such a high-energy performance! I would imagine that it would be easy to dial in performances after you hit age 50 and have been doing the same material for 20+ years, but they were on fire and brought the house down!
I can’t remember the last time I was at a festival show, and I also can’t remember ever being at a concert when I couldn’t actually see the stage! I joked that it was the greatest show that I never saw. Toward the end of the evening, the crowds had shifted so that I had a few peeks through to the actual stage, but I did enjoy the screen show. They played almost everything I wanted to hear, and hit all of my top favourite songs. They even primed the crowd by playing Bohemian Rhapsody to open the show – one of my favourite songs since the tender age of 9 years old.
The crowd was a great mix of Gen X and 20-somethings, and everyone around us was happy to sing and dance and jump and sway. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the crowd was in excess of 50,000.
And all 50,000 of them seemed to be trying to cram themselves into the Pimisi LRT station after the show.
We had another last-minute logistics change when Simon decided to stay downtown with his friends and let me take the car home. At first, I was a little leery about trying to find a car he had parked in an area I’m unfamiliar with at midnight, but it worked out okay. Simon initially said he was going to escort me to the car and then meet up with his friends, but I put on my brave girl panties and said I’d figure it out. Microadventures are about leaning out, right?
And I’m not going to lie, I felt well-cared for as he texted me throughout my journey, insisting I text when I got on the train, off the train, in the car and in the driveway. So this is where it starts to shift, when the kid starts taking on some of that caretaking? I thought I’d have more time! It is, however, nice to be loved and cared for.
In all, this was a classic addition to the summer 2025 microadventure challenge – a chance to see my own city in a new way, a fantastic festival and concert, time with one of my best friends and a chance to be cared for by my family. What more could you ask of a perfect summer evening?