The last word

Here’s Johnny! Kentucky style

I love the gentle thud of hatchets in the morning. It sounds like victory.” Yes, perhaps not a Kentucky version of Apocalypse Now, but axe throwing is big in Louisville. (Just 50 yards to the right of the conference hotel there’s a local axe-throwing gallery.) The concept is now being adapted to the BCI presentation schedule.

“If speakers over-run their allocated times, we know how we’ll be doing them,” says one BCI director darkly. Another quaint custom of the American heartland moves mainstream. Not to be outdone the BCI golfing tournament said that this was about to give a new meaning to “sudden death play-offs”.

Newshounds may be two a penny in battery reporting circles but we’d now like to introduce you to our very own NewsDonkey™ . NewsDonkey™ has been out and about in the great state of Kentucky.

It’s not April 1 but NewsDonkey™ can happily report that Rabbit Hash, a remote Kentucky town has since 1998 appointed dogs to serve as its mayor. (It serves as a fund-raiser for the local historical society.)

NewsDonkey™ — his slogan “All the News that’s Fit to Print” — is now canvassing BCI members for a possible future fundraising role for the association. A bale of hay, a bucket full of corn mash* and a BCI Golf Pass will keep this animal happy for many a conference to come.

*left in unsmoked oak barrels for seven years please

Thundering into Town

A deafening roar of welcome rang out across the skies over Louisville at the weekend as the great and good of the lead battery industry began to descend on the town ahead of the convention.

Heads turned skywards in awe to witness what many thought might be the arrival of the ‘Battery Force One’ jet carrying BCI’s new president and leadership team.

In the event, it was something far less impressive — only one of the most high-tech stealth fighter jets in the world being put through its paces ahead of the Thunder Over Louisville Air Show.