Highland Games

Today we went to the Highland Games in Norwalk, CT. This is the 87th year it has been in existence. It's the third oldest games in the US. It was as fun as anything with two small children can be.

We made our way through all the clan tents learning about them and getting stamps in our passports. We learned their war cries and made up our own. Mommy's war cry is, "Those are my rules!" Daddy's war cry is "Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolaso, aso aso!" Beckett's war cry varies greatly. The latest incarnation was, "I see a red rose!" (Which if you're going to go all Lancastrian or something is a pretty good war cry. Or I guess it would be more York since they wanted to kill the red roses....I digress.) Personally I liked, "I like to play Smash Brothers!"

One clan tent with a very good reference book and nice chart did manage to find our poor little, defunct Somerville Clan. Our beast is a dragon shooting fire out of BOTH ends. Well done Lord Somerville for slaying that "worm".

(Another not so helpful clan guy told me it didn't matter if we were StUArts or StEWarts they were all the same. I'm not so sure my ancestors would agree.)

Chris inadvertently wore Clan Macpherson shorts. We're not so sure which clan Beckett inadvertently wore.

We watched some dancing...a fling or a reel or something. It kind of involved swords so that was neat.

We also spent a good amount of time watching a couple of the "heavy" events. I will steal from Wikipedia and explain. (Our hot, crying children forced us to leave before the caber toss. Sad.)

Scottish hammer throw: This event is similar to the hammer throw as seen in modern-day track and field competitions, though with some differences. In the Scottish event, a round metal ball (weighing 16 or 22 lb for men or 12 or 16 lb for women) is attached to the end of a shaft about 4 feet in length and made out of wood, bamboo, rattan, or plastic. With the feet in a fixed position, the hammer is whirled about one's head and thrown for distance over the shoulder. Hammer throwers sometimes employ specially designed footwear with flat blades to dig into the turf to maintain their balance and resist the centrifugal forces of the implement as it is whirled about the head. This substantially increases the distance attainable in the throw.

We almost get an up kilt shot.

Chris got this great video of a hammer toss in action.

Weight over the bar, also known as weight for height. The athletes attempt to toss a 56 pound (4 stone) weight with an attached handle over a horizontal bar using only one hand. Each athlete is allowed three attempts at each height. Successful clearance of the height allows the athlete to advance into the next round at a greater height. The competition is determined by the highest successful toss with fewest misses being used to break tie scores.

The sound of pipe bands and their piping competition filled the background constantly, but I don't think we got any videos of it. We ate scotch eggs and shrimp and chips (for some reason I wanted shrimp not fish). I didn't go for the Irn Bru because it was $3 for a little bottle and that made my penny pinching Scots blood boil. Beckett golfed and won 2 prizes and cheated at the ring toss, but they still let him have 3 prizes for that and fishing. He is in love with his dragon necklace and I think is going to fight to wear it to church tomorrow.

And here are some random "flavor" shots.