Portland Highland Games

Yesterday was the 57th annual Scottish Highland Games here in beautiful, sunny Portland, Oregon.

My own connections with the Games don't go quite that far back. My family moved here in 1972, when I was a sophomore in high school. I can't say I went to every PHG until I moved to S Florida in 2001, but I think I went to about 75% of them over the years.

I usually go alone, but until my Dad became very ill he went with me a couple of times. Yesterday I wore his Irish-style walking cap, which Mom gave me after his death.

I've been to highland games here in Portland, of course, but also the ones in S Florida, Central Oregon, and the Seattle area and Portland's is always the best. Part of the reason is the physical setup. At the other three games I've been to, they all take place in a flat field, with the bagpipe competitions being only one of the events going on, and taking place in a corner of the field. Here in Portland the games take place out at Mt Hood Community College, with the bagpipe band competitions going on down on the 50 yard line on the track at the base of the grandstands--and the stands are always packed for them, so several hundred people are there. And after the competitions they have the advanced level caber toss, and then the massed bands (after they can get them all out of the two beer tents).

Of course it helps that at the Games, the seats in the grandstand are shaded from noon on....

There was lots of other stuff going on--fiddling competitions, vendors of all kinds, the Highland athletic events, a specialist in Scottish genealogy, etc. There were also other entertainers, whom I was not able to hear, since I don't have a clone with a group mind or the ability to bilocate.

The entertainers this year were:
Beltaine;
Rebecca Lomnicky and David Brewer , a Scottish fiddle & bagpipes duo; and,
and Cathy Speer, a local singer/songwriter.

Highland games here in Oregon and Washington benefit from having I-5, the major West Coast N-S route, running through the Western parts of the states. Portland is 3 hours South of Seattle, and 6 hours South of Vancouver, BC, so we always get bands from the whole area and sometimes from further afield. Two of the bands had placed in the top 10 at the world competitions in the last couple of years.

This year's bands in the competitions were as follows:

In Grade 4 were the:
NW Junior Pipe Band from the Seattle area;
Portland Metro Youth PB (who challenged up a grade as well);
Portland Police Highland Guard PB;
White Spot PB, from up near Vancouver BC.

Grade 3 had:
Bushmills Irish Pipers PB, up from San Francisco;
Greighlan Crossing PB, also from the Vancouver BC area;
Portland Metro PB, which also challenged up to Grade 2;
and the Keith Highlanders PB, down from the Seattle area.

In Grade 2 were:
New Westminster Police PB, from the Vancouver BC area, who under their previous name (Maple Ridge) are long-time favorites here in Portland; and,
the Chilliwack & District PB, also from BC.

Our only Grade 1 pipe band was another long-time favorite here in Portland, the Triumph Street band also down from the Vancouver BC area. This band is huge. I've been to other games where the massed bands were smaller than Triumph Street alone.....

All the bands yesterday were excellent, and I heard some great music. I really wish I knew which pieces each band played because some of them had some jazzy elements, and several of them really rocked.

Speaking of the massed bands, yesterday's was very impressive. It took up the entire width of the football field, and was about 30 yards long.

All in all, a great show.

Weird 4th of Julies

I've had some weird and a bit odd July 4th experiences.

One year I had to drive from the Tacoma WA area down I-5 to Portland that evening because I was working a summer job and had to be at work on the 5th. I-5 along that whole stretch passes through or near a lot of municipalities as well as going right past McChord air force base & Ft Lewis just south of Olympia. During the entire almost 3 hour trip I saw every municipal fire works display and every single backyard display of illegal fireworks along the entire route. (In OR & WA anything which explodes is illegal, but vendors on the Indian reservations can sell them anyway.)

One year a friend invited me to go with him to his small beach house near Rockaway on the OR coast. We went to see the municipal display from a bluff above the beach where they were being set off. Due to an odd air inversion, all of the smoke collected in a layer below the bluff and none of the fireworks actually made it above the smoke. (It was kind of pretty anyway.) And of course lots of people in the parking lot had their own illegal fireworks.

One July 4th my then-girfriend had tickets to the professional soccer game being played in Portland's stadium. After the game, there was a very excellent fireworks display which was set off from the football field of the high school across the street. What was weird or odd about this? Well, the stadium did an EXCELLENT job of collecting and amplifying the explosions which took place right above it--it was amazingly loud.

I've also had some very nice Independence Days, too.

When I was growing up in Highland Park IL, which is North of Chicago along Lake Michigan, we always went down to the beach where you could see all the municipal displays from all the cities up and down the lake shore.

Independence Day fireworks in the Bend OR area are shot off from the top of Pilot Butte, which is the highest not actual mountain point in the area and so could be seen from all around. This made it really easy to drive to a vantage place and tune the car radio in to the station broadcasting the musical accompaniment.

During the summer between my two years of Library School at the U of Washington up in Seattle, I went down to the W Seattle shore along Elliot Bay to watch the fireworks being shot off from the top of the Space Needle.

And several times I volunteered at the Waterfront Blues festival in Portland OR, which always takes place around the 4th, and they always had nice fireworks displays.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!