Thursday, April 2nd
What a long day! Today was a day full of car riding and purchasing. To start our day, we met with Mr. Hwang around 7:30 AM to go over all that we had done this week. We spoke about our finances, what our plans were for the day, and our plans for next week. He gave us some valuable information about efficiency testing which we plan to utilize during that week. All in all, Mr. Hwang added some valuable insight into our week, and helped us to recognize what exactly we want to accomplish.
After meeting with Mr. Hwang, Eli and I went to class, then headed over to Auto Repairs by Patrick. Here, Eli introduced me to Patrick and his son. While at the shop, they showed us where we would be working, what tools we could use, and showed us what assistance they could provide to the project. We then told them we were planning on buying bikes today, and they made a few suggestions into the type of bicycle we needed, as well as where to buy them. They pointed out a few thrift shops in the area that they knew had bikes, and told us to look there.
After leaving Patrick’s, we headed over to a pawnshop about 10 minutes away. In the shop, we found quite a few bikes, but sadly none of the bikes were within our price range. We then headed to Goodwill to see if they had any bikes, which they did. However, these also did not meet our requirements for the project. Following our trip to Goodwill, Eli and I went to The Varsity where we had planned to meet with a potential Craigslist seller. After a long time waiting, Eli and I finally met the guy, who was extremely nice and enthusiastic about bicycles. He showed us two different bikes, offering one for $150 and one for $200. After a couple minutes of bargaining, Eli and I were able to get one bike down to $100. We paid the man and went on our way with our new bike!
We then tried a few more thrift stores and pawnshops looking for the right bike, but none were in our price range. We then took to our trusty Craigslist to see if we could find another bicycle based on Patrick’s suggestions. Luckily, we found one listed for $100 from a guy in Kennesaw. We loaded up the car and our wallets and made the long trek to Kennesaw to meet the guy. Unfortunately, when Eli and I arrived, we realized the bicycle wasn’t exactly what we were looking for. We thought we could make it work though. We tried to bargain with the man, but he wouldn’t budge from $100. So, we bid him a good day and went on our way. Eli and I decided we would both look over the weekend online for bike listings, and plan to buy our last bicycle on Tuesday morning.
Of all our days this week, I would have to say this has really felt like a senior project. Getting out into the world and interacting with people made today especially important. We learned a lot about the prices of bicycles, and the art of bargaining. To sum it all up, I would have to say the final day of our first week can be marked down as a success, as we came away with at least one bicycle.
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