Eastbay had transitioned from catalog to dream book, which inspired the often used tagline, "Dream big, dream often", which appeared on multiple catalog covers.

There were two really great dream big covers that I, I, I like, and one was a, a young man shooting basketball by himself, just like on a playground.

Just, just an old-time hoop and everything, but on the outsides were these silhouettes of all these people in the stands watching him and cheering for him.

And if anyone's ever played sports and that, you always, always feel like you're gonna take that last shot or that last at bat, and, uh, I think that's the feeling Rick tried to convey, and he, uh, came up with the dream big and dream often, and, uh, that was, uh, my favorite cover for sure.

And then we had another one, uh, a little bit after that where we had a, a little, probably a kid in grade school shooting baskets, and, um, he would, like, could barely get the b- the ball up, but in the background he'd have, um, a shadow of a, a player jamming the ball.

So what, like, what his, his dreams were.

That would be him someday.

A month later, Eastbay came through again, this time for an Olympic athlete, sprinter Gwen Torrence.

Do you wanna pick up the story from there?

Well, we're-- [chuckles] there almost wasn't a story because we, we were, um, we were on the verge of saying, "This just isn't gonna work," because we, we were really struggling.

We're actually, we were at our wits' end trying to figure out how we would get product, how we would get shoes because we, we had no money.

Uh, you know, we were in a small town, so there weren't a lot of connections.

Uh, before the internet, uh, there just wasn't a lot of communi- ability to communicate and develop some relationships.

And, and there were three of us that originally were gonna go into it, and I had called Art to, to maybe be the fourth because he, he was the one that really would, I think, would have made it work.

Um, and one of the guys who was a national marathon champion, and whose name is Dave Elger, he decided at the last minute that he was gonna pull out and pursue his career in exercise physiology and coaching.

Or something else?