Houston Highland Games 2010

**Zardoz** · 18th May 10, 08:50 AM

May 15-16 We attended the 39th Annual Houston Highland Games and Celtic Festival. It was as usual a nice event. There were some challenges this year, mostly the bucketing rain Friday night and most of Saturday. The event is held at the Houston Farm & Ranch Club which has almost 90,000 square feet under cover, so most outdoor events including the solo piping, pipe bands, and heavy athletics where moved inside! Made for an interesting day...

On to the photos....

An ROTC Color Guard leads the opening parade.

Here's Triolamj and I carrying the Irish American Heritage Assoc. banner. to the far left is Jack Daw with Clan MacIntyre.

Holding my end up.

A couple shots of the massed bands, clans, and groups forming up. This is in the 'smaller side' of the arena, so you can get an idea of the size of the facility.

There was a wedding right after the opening ceremony. I missed it, but I got this shot of one of the wedding party.

A couple of the bands,

Ed Miller.

Teribus.

I couldn't figure out a good way to phrase "Hey, move out of the way so I can put a picture of your pretty daughter on the interweb", so here's a nice group shot!

**Zardoz** · 18th May 10, 09:07 AM

Here's X-Marker Medic78 throwing.

And here's the Shortbread contest, which I entered. I think of it as the part of the games for guys with bad knees and no musical talent!

Because of everything being inside, the pipe band competitions were a few feet away from the shortbread setup! Here's the world champ St.Thomas Highschool band marching in.

Here's the Girltorage congradulating me on my bronze metal for shortbread.

A rabble of X-Markers meet with the Saltire by the Clan MacIntyre tent.
Max (triolamj), Steve (Jack Daw), Wade (wrjohnson), Niles (Copey713), Mark (Zardoz), Shaun (Shaun Maxwell). We had at least a couple of other members that were on hand but didn't make the photo, Trifin and Medic 78.

A "pleat shot" because some of my girls were taking the photos...

More Saltire photos here; http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...3/index42.html

**cessna152towser** · 18th May 10, 09:29 AM

Super pics. It looks so unusual to hold highland games and pipe band comps indoors. Here's hoping we don't get heavy rain here for our highland games here in Scotland as we don't have the spacious indoor accommodation.

**Zardoz** · 18th May 10, 09:30 AM

On Sunday, the sky began to clear! The ground was still too wet to do much outside, and it was hotter!

I had my coffee watching the amateur hammer throw demo.

And ran into Medic78.

I wanted to see where the "Highland Coo" burgers we ate came from..

And I met up with my friend Steve, we used to work at the same motorcycle dealership.

I saw a Longhorn steer in the next pasture..

X-Markers Medic78 and Shaun Maxwell.

Some Highland dancers

The kid's caber toss.

Shaun working his clan tent.

Max working the Irish American table, where we greeted the handfull of Irish at the games.

All in all, we had a nice time this year in spite of the challenges the weather threw at us, and I'm looking forward to the 40th annual games in 2011.