I reconsidered some of my needs. Also, I ended up getting that 14" Pinebook and it’s amazing. It was brand new and still cheaper than any Thinkpad I could find, it’s super light, has great battery life and feels like a much more expensive ultrabook. Perfect solution.
As for the distro, I ended up going with Manjaro ARM i3 (major props to the Manjaro ARM team for supporting the hardware and making me an image).