I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that’s what I believed, no matter the situation. - Phil Knight

I didn’t consider myself an optimist by nature. Not that I was a pessimist. I generally tried to hover between the two, committing to neither.

There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought.

a full-throated, full-hearted thanks to my Penelope, who waited. And waited. She waited while I journeyed, and she waited while I got lost. She waited night after night while I made my maddeningly slow way home — usually late, the dinner cold — and she waited the last few years while I relived it all, aloud, and in my head, and on the page, even though there were parts she didn’t care to relive. From the start, going on half a century, she’s waited, and now at last I can hand her these hard-fought pages and say, about them, about Nike, about everything: “Penny, I couldn’t have done it without you.