Galloglaich Abu!

There's nothing like swordfighting in the rain..unless it spear-throwing in the rain of course. Desperate to get some combat in before Fresno CIty's Rennasaince faire, The MacKay brothers(Aghie, Ochiuan, and Duncan McKay) and myself (thier ever-zealous nephew)agreed to meet Renee(forgot her faire name) and Tigre Ui'Niall on the hill of sport. After some excellent rounds of one-handed swordfighting, (in which I seem to be learning agression at the cost of flexbility :p) we settled in for a few game. Some games we play on the hill of sport.

* Standing in the center of a circle while multiple oppenets toss spears at us. We are given a small walking stick to fend the spears of with and told our rear foot cannot move.

* 'Hold the line' combat, where we fought in a corridor. THe goal was to push past the other fighter or strike him down to 'break the line'. The tricky part was that you could'nt stumble, touch or strike the wall or you were conisdered to have struck, fallen on a comrade 'in the battle line' and lost. I put myself out by trying a leg sweep that evidently felled my fellow and not the enemy (whoops..at least lawyers don't exist in Ireland yet!)

* Spear Duels with ghillies. THIS GAME ROCKS. The two combatants face off at maybe 10-15 paces and stand with thier GHillies(assitants) roughly 1 pace from them. The ghillies carry three spears and a sghian (knife) and toss the weapons to thier respective master who hurl them at each other in an atempt to strike the other down. This really gets fun as our fighters are trained to catch spears as well as toss them. THe amtch against Aghi and Tigre was simply fantasic. Altough the ghillies barely escaped with their lives.

All in all a very relaxing day. I took a good half dozen blows to my swordarm though, looks like Long sleeve shirts are in fashion again :p