My name is Chelsea, and I’m 17 years old. My 5 very best girlfriends are all huge fans of John Mayer, and when we found out he was coming to Winnipeg we did everything we could to get tickets. We ended up getting them, and they were really decent – first deck, right next to the stage, row 8. We were all extremely pleased.

The date of the concert took place on Thursday, April 26th 2007, and on this day we had school. We decided not to go to school this day and instead we all met up at my friend Alana’s house in the morning and put on our dresses and did our hair and make up to get ready for the concert. At around noon we got on the bus and rode it down town to the Fairmont Hotel which is where most big names who come through our city stay. We didn’t know for sure he was staying there, but we thought it would be fun to check it out anyway.

We got to the hotel and noticed that there were 2 large silver, what appear to be tour buses parked infront of the Fairmont. Right where they were parked, was a local bus stop so we decided to pretend we were waiting for a city bus if anyone were to ask. A guy with a beard who was running in and out of the hotel carrying equipment walked past my friends and I, so I asked him if he knew what the buses were for; he was like “nope, sorry!” and continued on his way.

We stood there “waiting for the bus” for about 10 minutes when my friend Meagan turned around towards the Hotel entrance and said “Oh my god you guys that’s him!” The six of us turned around, and sure enough, there he was coming out of the hotel walking towards us. We all were completely in awe and excited that you were actually so close to us. He put his phone up to his ear and we took that as a cue not to approach. He walked right past us, straight onto the silver bus and the bearded man followed you.

We waited there until the buses left, and when they did we knew they were going to the concert venue, so we followed. We were on foot, so we didn’t get there till a bit after your buses arrived. When the six of us went inside the entrance, there was a woman wearing a lanyard talking to a group of people, giving them instructions. I approached one of the people in the group and asked her what was going on. She said “We’re part of John Mayer’s fan club, we get to watch his soundcheck”. The woman who was talking to the group came up to everyone with a clipboard of names, and a handful of wrist bands and was checking off everyone’s name in exchange for a wrist band.

Our names weren’t on the list, but we weren’t expecting them to be so we just went to eat dinner in the restaurant at the venue to kill time. They played a bunch of your music in the restaurant while we were eating so it really got us in the mood. We were all still star struck from when we saw you earlier and we just talked about what a fun day we were having. Little did we know, it was going to get much better.

After dinner, we still had about an hour until they would let people into the concert so we decided we wanted to be first in line. We waited impatiently for an hour and we were the only ones there for a while, but then the people started flooding in.

At 6:30pm, they opened the doors, scanned our tickets and we ran to the merch booth. We all bought our t-shirts, and went to our section. We went down the steps towards our seats and we sat down and talked about what great seats we got. They weren’t on the floor or in the front row or anything, but during dinner we decided that floor seats were no good unless you were within the first few rows. My friend Alana was like “Do you think he will be able to even see us?” and my friend Michelle said “I don’t know, at my dance recitals I can only see the people in the front row.” But that didn’t discourage us.

Myself, Michelle, and Caitlin stayed at our seats while Meagan, Alana and Kara went back up to the merchandise booth to get more stuff. The three of them came back after about ten or so minutes, and the woman who was wearing the lanyard that was talking to the fan club earlier followed behind them. The three of them looked really excited and they brought the woman to our seats. We had no idea what was going on but then the woman said “So I hear you girls are big John Mayer fans?” We were like “WE’RE THE BIGGEST FANS!!” and she was like “Oh yeah? What do you like about him? What are your favorite songs?” We gushed over you and named all our favourite songs. Kara said “3×5!” and then the woman said “Yah! I want to see the sunrise!” and I was like, “WITH MY OWN EYES!!” haha. Anyways, after we confessed our love for you to her, she said “Can I see your tickets?” We all pulled out our tickets and handed them to her. She looked at them, and then put them in her pocket. My friends were all looking at eachother wondering what was going on. And then she pulled out a chain of 6 tickets and showed them to us. She said “I’m John Mayer’s Ticket Fairy, and I’m going to trade your tickets for these.” We looked at them and they said “FLOOR, ROW 1”. We all started going crazy and hugging and thanking this woman! She said “Try not to freak out now because then people will know what I’m doing, but when I bring you down to your new seats you can freak out and go crazy.” So we all tried our best to restrain ourselves.

She brought us down, and our new seats were not only front row, but they were front row, center.

And my favourite part was, in between the first 2 songs the six of us yelled out “WE LOVE YOU JOHN!” and John Mayer leaned up to the mic and said “I love you too!”

The picture i put up shows exactly how personal we got with John.