Rotten returns.

Childcare tips from Ron.

Legal update.

Lew Officer brings us the latest news.

The answer is four.

Some time ago, when our Charter President first purchased his Chevy Silverado, we had a discussion in these pages about how many regular car parking spaces you would need to park a Silverado.  Recently, a Silverado owner ran the experiment at Woolies, and the results are now in.  It turns out, if you park a Silverado at a precise angle, it will snugly fit into three regular car parking spaces.  However, if people park either side of you then you will not be able to extricate your truck from the car park.  So, realistically, you will need at least four regular car parking spaces. 

Rotary Horse Racing Report.

The way that horse racing works is that you have a fairly basic level of races during the week and then the big races are held on the weekend.  So it was last week, with some run of the mill racing in Melbourne during the week leading in to a big weekend of racing. 

On Saturday racing fans flocked to Geelong, where Dirty Angel was one of the favourites in the fourth race on the card.  The tipster in The Age penciled Dirty Angel in for the win.  The stables advised that, if the DA got a good start, she was a good chance in the race.  So, no hope then.

On script, Dirty Angel missed the start badly and then ran quite well.  A fast finishing fourth left us wondering once again what might have been if she had the ability to leave the stall when the gates opened.

The excitement of the Spring Racing Carnival then peaked on Sunday as the racing moved to Ararat.  Overflow Miss lined up in the Ararat Council Maiden Plate.  Maidens are very hard to win; very few horses have won more than one.  I think the record is held by Bold Personality, who might have won about eight back in the day. 

An interesting fact about Overflow Miss leading into the race was that she had never beaten home a horse that had itself ever beaten another horse home.  The only horse she had ever beaten home, Stella Boo, has come last in every race and jump out she has ever contested.  Expectation was high amongst connections that Overflow Miss could finally break this record.

There was one gear change, with the jockey deciding to wear a pompom on top of her hat this time around.  Overflow Miss got away poorly and travelled towards the back of the field for most of the trip.  However, she flashed home down the straight to finish in a very respectable fifth place out of nine.  Post-race the jockey, Mel Julius, declared Overflow Miss was ready to win at her next start.  Hopefully the stables will stick with the pompom and find another race for our courageous conveyance very soon.

Ten years ago, Shane was working hard at a club working bee building Rotary House.  Unfortunately, he discovered he had a flat tire.  Luckily it was only partially flat; only the bottom half was affected. 

It was pouring raining, so members pitched in to give Shane a hand.