In late June 2003 I heard about a Highland Games taking place in a nearby city. If you aren't familiar with the term, "Highland Games" is sort of a festival of Scottish culture. Scottish dancing, Scottish music, Scottish clothing, Scottish food, books on Scottish history and dress, sheepdog trials, and strange events like caber-tossing. My family used to go when we were younger (we have some Scottish blood, and my dad actually used to be able to play the bagpipes, though I think he could only play two songs) but I hadn't been to one in at least 20 years, and since Willow and I hadn't been able to do much outside stuff since we moved here (because I was buried in freelance for the first 7 months we were here and had no time to do anything fun) we decided to go. I invited my new friend Isabelle, a fellow juror from the attempted murder case I was on, and she brought her boyfriend Paul and their friends Monica and John.

We had a good time wandering around, although we were only there part of Saturday (I think it ran Fri-Sun) and didn't time it right to see all of the stuff we wanted to see. Isabelle, Paul, and Monica tried some Scottish meat pies, which I hear were good, but nobody decided to brave the haggis. There were a lot of folks running around in kilts. Isabelle bought some treacle because we didn't know what the hell it was. Turns out it's a super-hard molasses treat that smells like burnt molasses and is super, super hard. So hard, in fact that while I had a picture of her trying to bite a piece of it off of the main hunk of treacle, I didn't want to post it ... it takes a lot to turn a cute goth girl in a blue tie-died dress into a strange and horrifying toothy beast, but treacle managed it.

Anyway, on to the pictures.

Caber-tossing is a Scottish sport where you pick up a tree trunk that's taller than you are, then run forward with it, flipping it forward and trying to get it to flip over completely (so the up-end hits the ground and the bottom end continues over, for a total rotation of 270 degrees). What the heck is the purpose of this, you ask? Turns out like many Scottish sports it has a wartime origin. When you're always fighting rival Scottish clans (and those bastard English) in the Scottish highlands, you often have freezing-cold streams that you need to cross. The caber-toss was invented so you could prove to your clan chieftain that you could quickly make a bridge over such streams so you and your fellow Scotsmen could cross the stream and continue on to beat the living hell out of your enemies. Anyway, this picture is a dude in a kilt preparing to hoist the caber so he can run and flip it. I don't have any pictures of the running and flipping because it was hard to track them with the camera and I had no idea when they'd decide to do the flip, so I ended up taking a lot of photos of the trailing leg of the guy as he went out of frame, or of the caber lying on the ground after a completed throw.
They have caber-tossing for women as well. I think the cabers are smaller (but always a certain regulation weight, one size for males and one for females). Needless to say, the women athletes were really buff. Many of them, such as this woman, preferred mullet hardos. You can also see a guy standing behind her in this picture ... that guy is the safety guy to help catch the caber if the athlete lets it teeter backward ... which usually means it teeters toward the crowd, and we had one incident were a space in the crowd cleared out REALLY fast when the caber starting heading our way....
So Scottish dancing is a little like Irish dancing in that there's a lot of vertical jumps and crazy stuff with legs being bent at impossible angels. At this Games there were girls of all ages competing (and a few boys). Willow wanted to see the teen and adult girls competition but we missed it. Still, these girls (I think this was the age 5-10 competition) were pretty good. I mean, I couldn't do it.
The Games took place at a large park, and the sheepdog trials were in a remote but open grassy area. Watching this was pretty funny because sheep are really stupid. The dogs are trained to slink up on the sheep, so as long as the dog hugs the ground, the sheep pretty much ignore it. Then the dog hops up and runs to one side or the other to steer the group of sheep. When the dog has steered the sheep the way it needs them to go (or toward or away from something, depending on how you look at it), it drops back down low, and the sheep IMMEDIATELY stop running and start eating. It's like an on/off switch in their heads. Anyway, this dog is almost done with its trial, bringing the sheep to a pen near the trainer.
There were a lot of Scottish drill stuff going on (which in high school terms would be considered a marching band, but a true Scotsman would probably beat you up for making that comparison). There probably was some sort of competition going on, but we weren't around for that so we just saw a lot of groups practicing and playing.
A wide shot of a drill group. I don't think they're the same group as above, despite the similarity in their kilts (but I don't know enough about recognizing tartans to say for sure).
A close-up shot of the guys in the wide shot.
A different drill team. I know this because their kilts are mostly blue. :)
Another team, not the same ones as before because their kilts are different enough that even a layperson like me can tell them apart.
This is another unusual Scottish sport. In addition to a shotput-like event where they throw a weight for distance, they also have a throw for height, which is where they pick up a weight from the ground in front of them, then swing it upward and over their heads, trying to clear a pole vault height marker (it has to go up and over without knocking over the pole ... or hitting you on the head, I assume). This sport also has a martial aspect. It turns out it was used to take out enemy archers on castle walls. You'd stand flat against the castle wall and wait until an archer or lookout peered over the wall, at which point you'd know their position and could hurl a weight upward, over the castle wall, and conk the enemy on the head. Since these things weigh something like 30 pounds, that was usually enough to take the guy out. Also notice the big belly on this guy. That's all muscle. Like weightlifters, they develop big muscles in the stomach, which help compress the guts against the spine when lifting, creating a thick barrel of muscle and bone that's better at supporting the heavy weight than just your spine and its attached muscles. So ends today's science lesson. Gamers, by the way, generally don't have that excuse.