Highland Fling

On Saturday, the ladyfriend and I took a rare trip outside the most immediate environs of our slice of paradise to check out the Highland Games in Antigonish, the closest to authentic pronounciation we were able to come up with is "Annie Gnish (like knish)".  It was, quite honestly, a lot of fun.  While I didn't get to check to see what clan my family (father's side) might be connected to, we did get to see some Highland dancing, some heavy games events (yes, heavy), bagpipe competition, and, our favourite, the tug-of-war.

 We caught three of the heavy games events.  I couldn't get a good picture of the 16lb hammer toss, but we did get to see the caber toss, which was quite impressive.  The winner of that event was a lawyer from Brooklyn, NY.  Yay, Brooklyn!

The other event was 'weight for height,' where participants took turns throwing a 56-pound weight over an ever-higher bar.  The winner tossed it over the 17 feet mark.  The announcer kept saying that tossing that stone was like tossing a six-year-old.  I've known some six-year-olds I've wanted to toss (not the boy, of course).  I'll just keep it at that.