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Ride the Hiawatha scenic rail to trail

 Kids were in the Missoula Fireclassic meet for the Juneteenth long weekend. On Monday, 6/19, on our way back from Missoula to Seattle, we decided to do the scenic Hiawatha Bike ride. It is an all downhill 15mile ride through 10 tunnels and 7 sky high trestles. It absolutely falls into the do-at least-once-in-your-lifetime buckets. History of the Hiawatha scenic rail can be found at  Route of the Hiawatha (Official Website) > Area Information > History (ridethehiawatha.com) . In short, the Milwaukee Road railroad company in Chicago decided to expand west to take advantage of the expanding West Coast markets and Pacific Rim Trade. Construction started in 1907 and intercontinental freight services started on July 4, 1909 with passenger service starting 6 days later. The last train west of Butte passed through in 1980 and after that the line was abandoned. Throughout the trail, historical information is displayed. The "Route of the Hiawatha" is most famous for the long St....
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2023 First Long Course Meet highlights - May Flowers at WKCAC

 We decided to jot down Neel and Mili's performance highlights from their swim meets so that we remember and remind them their competitive swimming years when they are older :) These highlights are from the meet recap by Coach Jay Pearson. Ani Purkayastha has been training hard and was ready to swim fast and that is exactly what she did. She posted best times in all six races, looking smooth and strong in the water. The wildest race was her 200 where she dropped 32 seconds. Rahul Purkayastha wasn’t about to let his sister have all the glory; he posted four best times and swam two races for the first time. He kicked things off with a huge 34-second drop in the 100 Back and followed that up by getting a BB time in his first-ever long course 200 Back. He finished off the meet with an 8-second drop in the 200 Free.

PN WAVE Spring Showdown Meet highlights (Mar 25, 2023 - Mar 26, 2023): When the Swiss cow bells came visiting!

On Sat 5/13/2023, I heard some bells as the kids walked in after the swim practice. Neel joyfully said, we are like the Swiss cows with bells today Maa. He was referring to the medals that Mili and he received for the Spring Showdown meet held in mid-April. They were laden with multiple medals that really sounded like cowbells as they walked about :) Wave ended the Short Course Season in fine fashion with a fantastic performance at the Spring Showdown, earning our highest team finish since last year’s Montana travel meet. We grabbed 4 th place out of more than 30 teams and 900+ swimmers!  Sr.Prep Top 30 Improvements Rahul Purkayastha dropped 3.95 seconds in the 100 IM & 3.90 seconds in the 100 Back, & 3.77 seconds in the 200 Back, & 3.02 seconds in the 100 IM Top 8 (A Final) Finishes Ani Purkayastha – 1 st (50 & 100 Back), 4 th (50 Fly) New US Motivational Times BB Rahul Purkayastha – 100 Back, 100 Free

Feb 17th, 2023 Mid-winter break snowmobile tour - Yellowstone National Park Winter Wonderland

 We have enjoyed the pristine beauty of the Yellowstone National Park several times during summer months over the past few years. Famous for the mesmerizing geysers, lakes, mountains and wild bison, I thought we had seen it all, but as usual Somnath had something new planned for our mid-winter break outing.  We picked up our SUV rental which ended up being the sturdy black Ford Expedition in the afternoon and left after kids finished their swim practice on Wednesday, Feb 15th. Our goal was to reach Idaho for a night stay at Baymont Inn & Suites at Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.  Sleep came in easily since we checked in way past midnight. Mili had forgotten to turn off her 7am alarm and next morning, we scrambled out hurriedly out of the bed to turn off her rock music blaring at full volume. It helped us have an earlier than usual (after late night drive) breakfast and we chatted briefly with the Indian man at the reception who checked us in the previous night. He owns a tour c...