Heh. I thought you'd be interested. The SCA is a group of people who are generally pretty serious about their historical accuracy, but they're pretty fun. At least my local group is. Check this out and see if there's a contact for your area.
http://www.sca.org/geography/This guy's obviously being an a** hat, but that's the calibre of activity that can happen in a fight. (And this kind of behaviour isn't usually tolerated like that. In my local group the people there would be doing mean things to someone who acted like that.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5JaQq2DakgBasically it's moving quickly with anywhere from 15-30 lbs of armour on. Swords are usually made of Rattan wood wrapped in duct tape, and shields are more often than not wood with bike tires wrapped around the edges.
It's pretty cool, and you can meet some amazing people.