Yesterday at my installation, one of the units had an organization day. Part of it was athletic events and skill competitions, such as archery, axe throwing, and they even included two Scottish Games events, throwing the stone and caber tossing.
I had helped them with the caber toss rules and my folks in the Directorate of Public Works made the axe targets and found some poles for the caber toss. As you will see in the pics, the cabers were on the small side. This was intentional because we didn't want soldiers hurting themselves and we wanted to give them a chance to suceed more often than not. The poles are treated landscape poles, about 8 inches in diameter and about 9 feet long. Probably weighed about 80 pounds.

I have erased faces and unit identification patches because one never knows where photos on the internet will wind up.

Units competed as team with about 4 soldiers per team. They really got into it and had a lot of fun. Even with these small cabers, not everyone could flip them.

I had promised them I would show up in a kilt to add some atmosphere to the event. In one of the pictures below, you will see me in my Hay Ancient PV kilt. Sporran is self-made and the belt is from CavScout.

I made the poster at the bottom of the easel. Found some caber pictures from Highland Games events in Scotland. I provided the flags too. I also made the small sign at the bottom which says "There is a Kilt for Every Man!..." I made up some business cards with the Xmarksthescot.com website and handed out about 50 of these to soldiers who stopped by just to look at the event or ask questions about my kilt. I had a good time talking to the soldiers and I hope we will see some of them join the forum and maybe support our vendors. There were about 5 guys that had kilts or had worn kilts at weddings.
There was also a Captain who was from Franklin NC and knows Matt Newsome. For security reasons, I won't name him.

I also talked with the Commander of the Garrison (my boss) who had not seen me in a kilt yet. He was favorably impressed, I think.

All in all, a very good, if cold day. Not a single negative comment that I heard.

Here are the pics:






Tom