A Sign Of The Times

My friend Al and I went to the Nike Shareholder meeting this morning. This is the third Nike Shareholder meeting for Al and the second time I've been with him. The first meeting that Al went to was several years ago at the Nike Campus in Beaverton, Oregon. That is the one where he went alone. He said there were a few thousand there and they gave out really nice gift bags that included T-shirts and other wear. They also had several Olympic athletes there. The second shareholder meething that Al went to he took me along and it was five or six years ago at the Oregon Convention Center, there were at least two or three thousand in attendance, they gave out gift bags but according to Al not as nice as the gift bags they gave out at the first meeting that he went to, and as Al reminded me today it was John McEnroe not Jimmy Conners that was there. Today there were barely three hundred people there, they gave out no gift bags and there was not a single athlete there. Al had hoped Michael Phelps would be there but as I suspected he wasn't. The last Nike Shareholder meeting that I was at was almost two hours long but today's meeting lasted barely a half of an hour. I attribute this to the economic times we are under right now. The kind of questions that were asked of Phil Knight by the shareholders confirmed this. Of the about ten questions that the shareholders asked Knight four of them were about CEO and executive pay. Knight patiently asnwered the questions. I think Nike really downsized their shareholder meeting because they didn't want to offend the shareholders with any kind of extravagance.

Still it was a very fun morning. I had never been at the Nike Campus before and it was absolutely beautiful. The meeting was in the Tiger Woods Center. They had a lot of Woods' items throughout the building. They also had a nice little breakfast buffet put out for those of us that came to the meeting a little early. Normally I don't do buffets because of germs but Nike was so clean you could have eaten off of the floor. So I had a nice little breakfast, then went into the meeting, and listened to Knight talk for a bit.

I almost made a really bad fashion mistake. I used to wear Nike shoes but a couple of years ago when I was going through the bone cancer scare the doctor strongly suggested that I be fit for special shoes with orthopodic inserts for the left foot. I followed his advise but the speciality medical footwear company that I went to uses New Balance because they are a little cheaper and the inserts are darn expensive to begin with. The total cost that I paid for the shoes with the insert? $370. While I was waiting for Al to pick me up I looked down and had the New Balance Shoes on! I quickly changed to a pair of dress shoes. Whew, I might have been escorted out of there in handcuffs!

Have a great day everyone!!