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CABER TOSSING, WHOO-HOO! |
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Over the summer, and especially because I went to the Scottish Games, I have picked up the sport of caber tossing. For those of you who are ignorant of this amazingly cool "sport", it involves big burly men throwing telephone poles around. They weigh about 140 pounds and I believe are about 14 feet long. Alas, not being a big burly man myself (though I sometimes live in BURLIngton), my caber is only about 9.5 feet long and weighs 42.5 pounds. I will work my way up though - if I had started right off with a 140-lb. one I would probably have hurt myself. Here are some pictures my dad took for me while I was doing this (since obviously I couldn't take them myself ;-) ) : |
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TOSS NUMBER ONE |
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This is the caber standing straight up. I found this most excellent specimen in the woods near my house, and it has since made a few divots in my lawn...but nothing permanent. A word about the get-up, also. In later pictures you will see me wearing what looks like a very odd piece of clothing. What this is is me in a sweater, but the right arm is wrapped around my shoulder. Laugh if you want, but first YOU try throwing this thing with only a T-shirt as padding. |
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This is me running (or more appropriately, "trotting") with the caber, probably shortly before I threw it. Once you balance this monstrosity, the idea is to start walking forward, breaking into a run to give it forward momentum, and then right as you're about to lose control of it, you HEAVE it a far as you can. If you do it correctly, the caber goes end over end, hopefully in a straight line. Only a Scot could conceive of something this ridiculous as a sport :-). |
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And OVER she goes! As I said before the goal of tossing it is to get it to go end over end, straight. they measure how close to "straight" the toss is by using an imaginary clock; i.e, 12:00 was a perfect throw, and 6:00 is falling right back on your noggin. For it to count as going over though, it has to be within the 9-3 range. Otherwise the caber just fell back without going over, in which case they measure your score by what angle the caber made. The picture has the caber at about a 60 degree angle. You get the idea. At any rate, this toss ended up at about 2:30, which is pretty bad, but at least it went over. |
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Pictures from my second photographed toss |
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