Twenty-five years ago, a friend of mine received a tape in the mail. It was a black, regular tape he had got from a friend from home, including the hottest hits at the time. For my friend, Terry, home was Canada, and that tape had the keys to Canadian Rock Wonderland, namely Bryan Adams’s “Reckless”.

Terry was an exchange student from Saskatchewan who had chosen to come to Finland because Finland was a hockey country. He probably would have been just as happy to go to Sweden, but fortunately for me and my family, he ended up in our little town, playing hockey in the only team in town, and when he wanted to switch host families around Xmas, the door to our home was opened.

Then, early that summer, a couple of months before Terry was supposed to go back to Canada, he went on a European tour, which left me home alone – with Reckless. That summer, I worked for the City of Joensuu, mowing lawns around the city. And with the noise of the lawnmower around me all day, I escaped it into the world of Walkman. Into the world of Bryan Adams. And I loved it.

Ain’t no use in complainin’
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenings down at the drive-in
And that’s when I met you

When Terry got back from his European vacation four weeks later, I had already made a copy of his tape. I also knew all the songs by heart by then. But because Terry had only got the tape as was, without any cover or further info, I didn’t know the names of the songs. When I mentioned this to Terry, he looked at me and said: “How hard can it be to figure it out? Just listen to the songs.”

And he played the tape from the top: “You’re the silent type, and you caught my eye…” And then, “One night looooove affaiiiiiiiir”. Terry looked at me. “So, this one is called ‘One Night Love Affair’.” And so we went through the tape, “Run To You”, “Somebody”, all the way to “Ain’t Gonna Cry”.

For the longest time, I had “Summer of ‘69” down as “The Best Days Of My Life”.

Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah – I’d always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

On August 1, on his birthday, Terry left Finland, returned to Canada, and went to college. We kept in touch, regularly at first, then more sporadically, and then not that much. A year later, I left Joensuu and went to college. During my first year, Bryan Adams released “Into the Fire”, the much-anticipated follow-up to “Reckless”. I bought it on the release day at one of the downtown Helsinki record stores, and rushed back to my small dorm room to listen to it.

On a CD, no less. Good times.

Later that same winter, Music Box, a cable channel, ran a Bryan Adams special, basically a “miniplay” consisting of the music videos of his greatest “Reckless” hits, with some goofy interludes as glue. I didn’t have cable, but I had seen the show on the TV listings and wanted to see it badly. I called my Dad to see if he could tape it for me. He didn’t have that channel, either, so he asked a friend of his to tape it. I got the VHS tape a week later.

Oh, thinkin’ about our younger years,
There was only you and me.
We were young, and wild, and free.
Now, nothin’ can take you away from me.
We been down that road before,
But that’s over now,
You keep me comin’ back for more

After “Into the Fire,” Mr. Adams took a break from recording. I caught his tour in Helsinki and I have the T-shirt to prove it. Then I went to Canada, to work at Tackla, a hockey pant manufacturer in Orillia, Ontario. And while there, I tracked down Terry Z, and we agreed that it would be “great” if I could fly to Vancouver and hang out with him. So, in September, before my last year of college, and after my work at Tackla was over, I flew first to Detroit to meet my Michigan host family from 1986, and then kept on going to the West.

Terry had a nice little apartment somewhere in Vancouver. He introduced me to macaroni and cheese – and Meat Loaf. The musician. He also had a little humor publication he wrote and published, and delivered by riding his bike around the city, leaving his four-page funny called “The Coaster” to coffee shops everywhere. And he surfed. On water.

By next fall, I had graduated from the business school, and was living in the attic of an old house, next to a kindergarten. My aunt was the head of the kindergarten, so she pulled some strings and got me the apartment … and the right to use the downstairs kitchen in the evenings because my place didn’t have one.

Suddenly, too, the B-man was back with “Wakin’ Up the Neighbours”. And I fell in love.

Terry? Who knows.

You might stop a hurricane
Might even stop the drivin’ rain
You might have a dozen other guys
But if you wanna stop me baby don’t even try
I’m goin’ one way your way
It’s such a strong way let’s make it our way

The times were tough. I was an unemployed college graduate, trying desperately to find a job. To keep a positive outlook on things, I considered myself a pro hockey player, albeit one who didn’t get paid, and was playing in a minor minor league in Finland. But still. Better than not doing – or being – anything.

And then I scored a nice job at the Canadian Embassy in Helsinki, working for the trade division, and putting my finite wisdom to good use for Canadian companies that were trying to find an entry point to Finland. In 1996, the path took me to an environmental trade show in Vancouver.

Hi, Terry. Good to see you again. Crystal? Nice to meet you.

I also fell out of love.

I don’t wanna be the joke of the party
I just wanna be back where I started
I’m gettin’ out before the goin’ gets grim
So hey honey – I’m packin’ you in!

That summer, I went on a whirlwind tour of the Nordics, driving my black BMW from Helsinki, through Sweden, to Denmark, back up to Norway, and then Sweden again, before taking the ferry back to Finland.

Coincidentally, BA was touring Scandinavia as well, on the heels of “18 ‘Til I Die”, his first studio album since “WUTN” in 1991. I saw the show at the Oslo Spectrum.

After it, I drove to the Swedish-Norwegian border, and slept in my car.

18 til I die – gonna be 18 ‘til I die
It sure feels good / to be alive
Someday I’ll be 18, goin’ on 55!
18 til I die

By the time “On a Day Like Today” came out, I had moved to Sweden. It was the first BA album since Reckless that I didn’t buy on the day it came out. And something else happened. Life.

I met a wonderful Swedish woman, and fell head over heels in love with her. We moved to Finland, we had a son, we moved to Sweden, we had another baby, a daughter, we got married in Vegas, and we moved to a nice little yellow house in the suburbs.

Terry married his Crystal and they had a daughter, and a son, and a daughter, and they moved to a nice, big, white house in the suburbs. I had had some contact with the Z-man because he wrote for my now-extinct hockey magazine from Vancouver.

This week, 25 years after Terry came became a part of the family and was my acting brother, 19 years since my first visit to Vancouver, and 14 years since that environmental conference, we connected again.

I rode the Skytrain to the end of the line where Terry picked me up, and we kept on driving another half hour to their house. We chatted about hockey, we picked up the kids from school and kindergarten, we took another daughter to her gymnastics class, we reminisced about Joensuu, and our old, yellow Fiat 127, and we played hockey in their garage with the two smallest kids, and we drank Cokes, and when Crystal came home and we had just fooled around and not made dinner, we ordered pizza, before we went to Terry’s son’s hockey practice.

We sat behind the glass, behind the net, looking at the kids, the six-year-olds in their Ovechkin and Lemieux and Canucks sweaters sprinting around, going around pylons, trying desperately to lift the puck off the ice, and we talked, and laughed.

A lifetime in one day.

We may always be together
Or miles and miles apart
Tomorrow may be raining
But tonight we have the stars, yeah, yeah

Well, in Vancouver, it rains all the time in February. It rained when I got here, and it rained when we were waiting to get in to the BC Place to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics where Wayne Gretzky lit the Olympic flame and Bryan Adams sang a duet with Nelly Furtado.

It also rained after the Opening Ceremony when we were walking to Hockey House, a sponsor venue close to the arena.

A colleague of mine had encouraged me to make sure that I’d be at Hockey House after the Opening Ceremony because a good source had told him that “a certain Canadian rocker” would be there. And sure enough, just as I was about to finish my plate of finger food, I heard the opening riff to “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”.

And nothing could have stopped me.

I hadn’t seen a Bryan Adams show since the one in Oslo, Norway, in 1996. I have bought his two albums since “18 Til I Die” – “Room Service” and “11” – but can’t honestly say I even know all the songs on them.

But there I was, first 25 meters away from Bryan, then 15, then 10, finally inching my way towards the stage, until I was right there, closer to Bryan Adams than ever before in my life. Bryan Guy Adams is no longer a young, rebellious rocker. He’s 50.

Neither one of us is reckless anymore. But that night, he rocked. His old buddies Keith Scott (guitar) and Mickey Curry (drums) who’ve been with the band since the 1980s rocked.

And so did I.

Rocking to Bryan Adams, in Vancouver. Hanging out with Terry. Seeing Wayne Gretzky light the Olympic fire.

Inhale. Exhale.

Meeting Michael J. Fox – another favorite Vancouverite of mine – would surely unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe.

I need somebody
Hey what about you
Everybody needs somebody