The Wacky Cyclists

Believe it or not, there are three people that work here at the shop who have chosen to ride either unicycles or bicycles to work. The bicyclist (who also happens to be the company President) is an environmentalist who jokingly claims that due to the amount of oil needed to lubricate the chain on his bike, he has estimated that he gets over 200,000 miles per gallon on his bicycle. This rider also claims he’s going to ride to work all winter (which will be a first). He also has vowed to ride his age in miles on each birthday, and for the last two years he has done that. What combs everyone’s hair a little backwards is that he is not hesitant to remind everyone of his accomplishments. At the same time, if he ever misses riding his bike to work, there isn’t a person in the shop who doesn’t relish rubbing it in!

The unicyclists, however, really take the cake! They prefer to remain nameless, so we will simply refer to them as workers from the packaging department. They like to get to work at 5:00 a.m. to be ready for the rest of the crew that starts arriving shortly after. To do so, they leave their homes in Kidron (about six miles away) at 4:30 a.m. to get to work on time. They travel on the treacherous Zuercher Road with Schneck Hill on the West end that is so steep that when riding downhill on a bicycle, it is not unheard of to hit 45 miles per hour. On a unicycle, you have to work as hard going downhill as going uphill or you will loose control and end up flat on your backside! They take precaution by attaching bright LED lights to the brim of their baseball caps and a reflector on their backsides to keep from being run off the road by the early morning milk trucks.

This past summer, a brother of one of the unicyclists (who shares the same hobby) visited. To celebrate their reunion, the brothers chose to unicycle across Wayne County together, a 26-mile jaunt that took a little over six hours. We believe that was an historical first and it earned its way into a nice photojournalism article in the Wooster Daily Record newspaper. Do you have to be a little wacky to work at P. Graham Dunn? Not necessarily, but generally you fit in a little better if you are.

~Peter Dunn