Ben Schultz was born and raised in the suburbs of St Louis, MO. He built and flew free flight model airplanes until going to college, and won the junior national championship in towline glider before leaving for Ann Arbor. He went to the University of Michigan for two years, and when he received a very high draft lottery number, left school at the end of his sophomore year. The following year, he started racing bicycles with the Wolverine Sports Club in Detroit. He was a state road champion, rode the Nationals many times on the road and track, and his pursuit team finished 4th one year. He spent a total of 10 months over two years living and racing in Ghent, Belgium, where he realized that he would never get a professional contract.

He returned to UMich, receiving a BS in Mathematics and then matriculating to Georgetown University School of Dentistry, graduating cum laude 4 years later. He and his girlfriend (now wife) moved to Connecticut after graduation, and he was finally able to start working as a dentist3 months later. He started his own practice from scratch in 1987, and would caution anyone else to avoid that particular path. He had two practice locations in his 30 years of solo practice. After leaving his practice, he started working for other offices with varying degrees of success. As a Master, Academy of General Dentistry, he found it almost impossible to get his much younger employers to understand what he was talking about. 4 years ago, well above retirement age, he began working for a colleague who also has and MAGD, and he is thrilled to be able to talk to him and be understood. High-level dentistry is a thought process, where engineering and biology meet, in order to allow the patient to maintain their own dentition for their lifetime.

Due mostly to physical issues, he has not been on a bicycle for almost 10 years. After 15 years of yoga practice, he was injured (not in class…), and hopes to start it up again. When not braying at the heavens about not being a competitive athlete anymore, he started building and flying model airplanes about 3 years ago. At the outdoor national championships last summer, he remembered that if you can’t put your plane into a thermal, you are not going to receive the maximum available time.