The Hunt for a Mountain Bike

Aylee has been saving up her money for the past three months. During this time she has been waiting eagerly to earn enough money to purchase a mountain bike. She had originally determined how much she needed to earn by going to Wal-Mart and the Internet to find the cheapest mountain bike she could find. However, after talking to her uncle Adam, she decided that the cheaper, $70, mountain bikes were made very cheaply and would not hold out very well. So she decided that maybe she could find a used one that we could paint and fix up for a decent price.

On Saturday, Aylee and I spent the entire morning going around to just about every garage sale in Provo. We recently purchased an automobile GPS system. So, in the morning I went on the Internet and found addresses for all the garage sales that were advertised on the classified ads in our area. I found a website on the Internet that would convert those addresses to GPS coordinates. I loaded them all into the GPS. Once we would get to a garage sale, we would quickly look it over for any mountain bikes that might fit Aylee. Then we would hop back in the van and punch up the next closest garage sale. Then we would just follow the directions of the voice assisted GPS to our next garage sale. We hit about 20 or 25 garage sales in three hours.

By the time that we were done shopping the garage sales we had still not found a mountain bike for Aylee. We finally stopped at the D.I. to check for bikes there. We found one bike that could have worked, however, the frame was bent such that the wheel would only turn about 20° in each direction. It is very difficult to find a used mountain bike that is small enough for Aylee to use.

After our futile search for a mountain bike, Amber and I started calling a few friends here in the Valley to see if what they have done for mountain bikes for their children. Almost every family that we talked to recommended a particular bike shop in town. We decided to look at that shop and then shop around at the other bike shops nearby.

At one particular shop Amber and I walked in to find a U-shaped entrance to the store. Our left was a platform with several mountain bikes on it. However, these mountain bikes were clearly too big for Aylee. In the middle of the U was the entrance to the main part of the store. However, if you walked past the entrance and over to the right side of the U there was another pedestal of smaller bikes. As we were walking in, I motioned to Amber that we should check the smaller bikes. I walked ahead of Amber by just a few inches and as I approached the bikes I heard a huge banging noise and then found myself falling backwards and nearly landing on the floor. I looked at my glasses that were dangling off of my nose. They were all contorted and bent out of shape. My head was hurting and I could not figure out why. Then, I realized to the surprise of both Amber and myself that the smaller bike display that we were heading to was blocked by a large clear window that went the entire length of the wall and spanned the entire distance from the floor to ceiling. It was so clean that I had no clue that it was a glass wall. Needless to say, I was very embarrassed. I was ready to head out of the store rather than go in and explore some more. However, Amber convinced me to go on into the store and see what we could find.

We didn't find anything in that store, nor did we stay very long. I was surprised that nobody gave us funny looks or pointed at us as we walked around. However, I have no clue how they could not have heard the heavy sound of my body banging smack into that glass wall.

Our search for a mountain bike has made us rethink the challenge to Aylee to earn her own money for the bike. Any good mountain bike her size will cost roughly $200 or more. We are going to have to figure out how to work this out so that she can have a mountain bike. We have talked to her a bit and decided that maybe she will be getting a mountain bike as her only gift for either her upcoming birthday or possibly Christmas. Meanwhile, will keep looking at pawnshops and classified ads for a miracle bike that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (or a head through a glass wall).