The Highland Games

As promised, I've tracked down enough footage of the Highland Games event to give you a few glimpses into how epic it really was.

To start off, I was all decked out in crazy East District warrior gear because I had been adopted by the East District LE rangers for their team. My warpaint is pretty rockin: one side is the 3-spiral Celtic female symbol, the other is the ancient Scottish symbol for 'rock on'. In case you're wondering, I made that second one up on the spot that morning. The guy unable to handle my awesomeness there is my friend Doug.

East District made some rad shirts at Graden's the night before. If the letters look a bit crooked, that's because the night before was an epic going-away party for a long-time staff member. None of us got to bed before 2am that night, and the games started at 10am. Personally, I didn't get to bed until 3am and was randomly woken up by a CAR ALARM at 6am, so I was literally carrying through the excitement of the night before for the entirety of the Highland Games and once they were over I completely crashed, to the point of dozing off in camp chairs while we waited for the results to be decided. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The games consisted of several timed events, several distance events, and one tournament event called the tug-of-love. This I excelled at so that I beat two people (one of whom was the overall winner for the womens games) and lost to the man who went on to win the event.

It was a lot of fun, kilt-flying action.

There was quite a variety in the outfits being worn that day. Note the Hawaiian Scotsman.

As you can see, it was the Hawaiian Scotsman who unseated me at the Tug of Love.

Afterwards we all lined up for a game of Tug-of-War over the irrigation canal.

It was a grueling contest...

... but I and my team ended up in the drink. :)

My friend Alyssa "McSmooch O Lot!" and Raymond were the overall winners (and happened to be the oldest competitors for each gender, as my friend Amy pointed out).

My friend Matt "McGravy" Graden got the Best Warrior award. I think with the combination high scores, mohawk, and warpaint he probably earned it.

And to end it off, I'll let you watch Alyssa and I duking it out on the Tug-of-Love. This particular competition line-up brought quite a bit of murmuring since we're known to be buddies and now we were about to pull against each other.

So that's the Highland Games in a nutshell. It was absolutely hilarious. Most participants were chain-drinking beers and/or still hungover/buzzed from the party the night before. ALL the participants were wearing kilts, and I have to say that guys in kilts and warpaint do look pretty good. I can't wait 'til next year! Maybe by then I'll have an actual kilt instead of the ingenious two flannel shirts buttoned together. :)

Until next time!