Nike Headquarters

School’s out, so hopefully I will be able to keep this thing a little more updated. I ran into some account problems awhile back, but now things are all squared away and working out nicely.

A few weeks before school got out I had the opportunity to visit the Nike Campus/Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. Unless you know someone that works there, it is very hard to get into the place. My Business Leaders of Tomorrow club pulled a few strings and we were able to get in. Let me tell you, the campus is nice. They have a workout facility devoted to the employees, and each building is named after an athlete that has left a mark in the sports world. They have a Mia Hamm, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan building, to name a few. It feels like a mini-college almost.

My goal going in was to see a super star athlete or score on some new Nike gear. While the athlete part didn’t happen, and I didn’t walk away with a new pair of shoes, I did get to experience some cool things. First off, in the Mia Hamm building, one of the murals on the wall featured the Oregon Ducks football team from a few years ago, with my track coach smack dab in the center.

My other big surprise came around lunchtime. The employees eat like kings at Nike. The food is delicious, and quickly prepared considering the quality of it. I thoroughly enjoyed my Tarheel Bacon Burger, and I could get used to eating there everyday. On one interesting note, the eatery employees looked like ones you would find anywhere else, except for the fact that they were wearing Nike hats.

Anyway, I just so happened to see someone that I recognized sitting at a booth alone, reading a newspaper. I had never met him in person, but I recognized his face instantly. It was Phil Knight. Knight is the co-founder of Nike, former CEO, a former runner for the University of Oregon, and current chairman of the board for Nike. Currently he is the 62nd richest guy in the world. To top it all off, I shook his hand and got a picture with him. 62nd may be somewhat down on the list, but I don’t know how many other guys I will meet who are above him. According to some of the employees, even though he is no longer CEO, his say in company decisions is still heavily listened to and followed.

We also got to see the business of Nike, and the strategy they use that has made them so successful. For example, the core focus of all their advertising is a seventeen year old high school athlete. I also got to see through some tinted windows some of their research rooms. They have half basketball courts, short rubber tracks, and everything else that is needed to test products that they are developing. In this portion of the company, sports really is a science. The have sensors on the athlete doing the testing, and use physics to help improve the product.

Towards the end of our trip, we were able to go into the building that housed the legendary waffle runner, and a bunch of Steve Prefontaine’s original things. The story goes that Bill Bowerman wanted to create a running shoe that would make his runners at the University of Oregon better. One day he had the inspiration to take his wife’s waffle iron and head out to the garage. There he created the solution used for shoe soles, and used the iron to create a innovative new sole. Nike was quick to point out in their presentation also that the Waffle runner was not their first shoe, but rather a football cleat was.

 

We ended the trip with a free shirt. It wasn’t the shoes I was hoping for, but it was still a generous gift. Thanks Nike.

Run Fast

Track season has been keeping me busy the past few months. As such, I haven’t had the time to really update this much. It’s been fun to have ran and I have had a great season. Now that the track season has concluded I will be adding a few things. Check back soon!

New Track Coach

I was at Lum’s Auto Center this summer while my parents were looking at cars when I decided to pick up a recent Sports Illustrated magazine while they were looking around. After flipping through the pages I came to an article about some members of the University of Oregon Ducks football team. Being a citizen in Oregon, I decided to read about a couple of lineman that were making a difference in their eating habits and weight. Little did I know that one of the subjects of the article, Cole Linehan, would end up making the journey to Astoria High School, first as a substitute teacher, and now as my new head coach for track.

I am glad to say that he does look a whole lot lighter than an Pac-10 defensive tackle, so the things that he did must still be working. The link is below.

I Want My Body Back

The ER. How much does it hurt?

Friday morning I woke up and developed a terrible pain in my left abdomen. I thought that it would be just temporary, and I would still be able to go to school, but I was sure wrong. It at points reached level 7 intenseness in pain, and I could not make the agony go away. I ended up going to the ER instead of school, because it sure looked like learning wasn’t going to do me any immediate good. I laid on a hospital bed for around an hour and a half, while the hospital staff tried to figure out why the heck I was there in the first place.

Finally, after laying in pain, the were able to figure out from a cat scan that I had a kidney stone, something that usually only older people get. I was injected with narcotics, and then told I could leave while I was still drugged and unbalanced.

To top it all off, once I arrived home I took a nap and woke up with no pain. The stone had passed. Unfortunately, I decided I wanted to take a shower, because I was feeling grimy. Bad idea. With drugs still in me, and the fact that I was still weak, I ended up fainting. Halfway through my free fall I banged my head, and then nicked my back on the tub spout, which caused me to wake up. On the bright side I felt great after that and had the opportunity to go on a walk and enjoy the sunshine that Astoria has been experiencing. I felt rather chipper considering all things.

While in the ER, one of the things that came to mind while I was laying there was Brian Regan’s account of the ER. When they asked me to rate my pain, I couldn’t help but think back to how he had described it. Level 8 is a good number if you like morphine. The video is shown below.

A Special Parking Spot and Visit

This past Wednesday our school had the opportunity of hosting a town hall meeting for our county, due to our auditorium being big enough to accommodate all of the community visitors that showed up. The reason for this meeting was the visitation of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Ever since he has been elected to office, he has held a yearly public meeting in each county.

A couple of students got to go to the meeting including me. My interest in going was to see a real live US senator, along with trying to learn more about what the political debate topics are right now. I didn’t really care what was going to be said or if anything got done, just as long as I learned something.

The discussion wasn’t too hard to follow, until people started asking questions about healthcare, insurance, and anything else that is medical.

When the meeting was over, people who didn’t get a chance to ask the senator questions crowded him for one last say. A fellow student and I decided to try to get a quick handshake from him, which turned out to be a whole lot harder than it looked. Even though the meeting had been fairly calm, a small crowd around Wyden started getting riled up and the assistants started escorting the senator out of the building. We tried to cut him off at the entrance doors but there were still people around him and his advisors were trying to speed up his journey to his car. Finally in the parking lot before he loaded into his car I was able to shake his hand.

Some people that must have felt they still hadn’t given him an earful were still muttering to themselves after Wyden had left. I even had one guy stop me as I was reentering the high school and telling me he wanted to apologize for politicians robbing today’s generation of something or the other. I said I was fine with whatever he was talking about and he said I shouldn’t be about whatever situation he was referring to. I then decided to head to lunch before he could complain more about whatever was keeping him irritated at politicians. I saw him standing in the hallway when I turned my back a few seconds later looking like he want to share his life’s burdens with another student or community member. What an experience. I don’t know if I could be patient enough to be a politician if I had to constantly meet people like him. 

Due to community members coming to visit, the front row of our high school was roped off for visitors during that day. As an incentive to make sure students didn’t park in this zone, our principal left his personal parking space up for grabs. I didn’t expect to get it as I am usually not the first car or even the second to arrive at the high school. Imagine my surprise when after getting out of Seminary I pulled up to the high school with the principal’s space still open. I took full advantage of the situation and enjoyed being parked in a coveted spot for a day.

I Love My Ducks

The University of Oregon Ducks football team are playing in one of the biggest bowl games in the history of the program on New Year’s Day. They go against the Buckeyes of Ohio State. A month or two back, when people started see that Oregon had a shot at the Rose Bowl, a group of college students from the university created a video to show the appreciation and support for the Ducks.

It has become a big hit and is the unofficial hit song of the season for the football team. Chip Kelly, the Oregon head coach even showed to it to his players because he liked it so much. Whether or not it gave the team an inspiration boost is still unknown, but the video ended up proving to come true. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth a look. It’s an added bonus that the song’s got a catchy beat.

Oregon student group “Supwithugirl”.

A Touch of Fire

One of the classes that I am taking this year at Astoria High School is a class called Chemistry and Cellular Biology. The class is taught by Mr. R., and he does a great job of making it interesting.

He recently did some demonstrations to show reactions that can happen with chemical compounds. The mixture of methane gas with water creates methane bubbles. Mr. R. would than show us his pyrotechnic skills and throw the bubbles into the air, followed by lighting them with a lighter. The end effect can be seen in the picture below.

The class is the second I have taken from this particular teacher. Highlights of the class for me have been making root beer, ice cream, and holiday suckers. I’ve also enjoyed experiments that have involved fire.