Ben Abbott Rides the Sluicebox 100

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Scott Abbott

Ben came in third in this race in the mountainous environs of Fairbanks, Alaska.
For his account of the race, click here:
http://moosedent.blogspot.com/2013/07/sluice-box-100.html
The guy must have a tough father!

About Scott Abbott

I received my Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 1979. Then I taught at Vanderbilt University, BYU, and Utah Valley State College. At Utah Valley University, I directed the Program in Integrated Studies for its initial 13 years and was also Chair of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy for three years. My publications include a book on Freemasonry and the German Novel, two co-authored books with Zarko Radakovic (REPETITIONS and VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY, published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade and in English with Punctum Books), a book with Sam Rushforth (WILD RIDES AND WILDFLOWERS, Torrey House Press), a "fraternal meditation" called IMMORTAL FOR QUITE SOME TIME (University of Utah Press), and translations of three books by Austrian author Peter Handke, of an exhibition catalogue called "The German Army and Genocide," and, with Dan Fairbanks, of Gregor Mendel's important paper on hybridity in peas. More famously, my children are in the process of creating good lives for themselves: as a model and dance/yoga studio manager, as a teacher of Chinese language, as an ecologist and science writer, as a jazz musician, as a parole officer, as a contractor, as a seasonal worker (Alaska and Park City, Utah), and as parents. I share my life with UVU historian Lyn Bennett, with whom I have written a cultural history of barbed wire -- THE PERFECT FENCE (Texas A&M University Press). Some publications at http://works.bepress.com/scott_abbott/

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2 Responses to Ben Abbott Rides the Sluicebox 100

mikerol says:

July 4, 2013 at 6:51 pm

I know that you are justified to be a proud dad, Scott. However, Faibanks is in a plain if not floodplain, the monagnes are visible about 75 miles to the south, the Alaska Range with Denali. What you have around Faibanks are some that are not even piedmonts, but high embankments around the Chena River, say a couple of hunded feet at the most. Not that working up and down those rises cannot be a lot of work. The tour de france in Phyreenes it is not.x michael r.

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- Scott Abbott says:
  
  July 4, 2013 at 7:59 pm
  
  Although you remember Fairbanks from the old days, you’ve miscalculated here. Go to the race site on the internet, sluicebox 100, and look at the race maps that also list altitude gain. Over the course of the 5 legs of the 100-mile race, there is somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 feet of altitude gain.
  When I ride my bike up the steep mountainside here in my little town, I’m totally beat after a 1000-foot climb. The sluicebox race, they claim, has as much total altitude gain as any mountainbike race in the country. And unlike the Frenchies, they do it on fat-tired bikes on trails. None of that asphalt shit.
  
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