Travels with Tackawanna 8: Bandai Gold Line and Lake Hibara

Yesterday I decided to take a trip up north of Inawashiro to the Bandai region of Fukushima. This was my general route. I took the Bandai Gold Line up over Mt. Bandai to Fukushima Prefecture Route 459, and then went around the perimiter of Lake Hibara, one of five lakes in that region. The lakes were actually formed in 1887 when a volcanic eruption from Mt. Bandai changed the surrounding landscape.

It was a lot cooler yesterday than usual, even in Aizuwakamatsu. That made the whole trip more comfortable, because the sun was not beating down as hard as it normally does. A lot of people were out enjoying the weather, too. In fact, it was nice enough that a local Ferrari group was taking a nice tour on the roads. I saw a couple of 308s and 458s in the convoy. (The video is on my Facebook page for those interested.)

Towards the end of the latter dashcam video, I made a wrong turn; instead of going west coming off of Fukushima Prefecture Route 64, I ended up going east, back towards where the Bandai Gold Line deposited me. Thankfully, I didn't go too far before realizing my mistake, so I turned around and went back the right way towards Kitakata. Speak of the devil, apparently Kitakata had some sort of festival yesterday. I had heard about it on the news two nights ago, but forgot all about it. Oh well. There will be others in the region.

I stopped at a rest area on the way back, and looking back, maybe I should have kept going. That's because I scraped underneath Tackawanna's front bumper against the concrete curb as I was pulling into a parking space. You see, her wheelbase is not as short as a kei car, but it's shorter than most other passenger cars. Therefore, I have the ability to pull farther into a space, but I overestimated how far I could go before that portion of Tackawanna hit the curb.

The good news is that you can't see any damage if you were standing, or even kneeling in front of Tackawanna. The bad news is that I could feel some scrape marks underneath her front bumper. With winter coming, and a few tiny, but still visible "problem" areas in the paint, I don't feel too comfortable with the bumper's exposure. Then again, I have been planning to have Tackawanna repainted at some point, because her last paint job (and you could tell that an amateur did it) is not of the best quality and fading quite quickly.

But there's a problem with that, too. I can do one of two things:

1. shell out $1000+ (money I don't have on hand, by the way) for a professional paint job from a local body shop that will do the paint job, and do it right.
2. do the job myself for about a third of the above figure, but have to worry about finding/setting up an environment to do the work in, do multiple coats [and all that fucking sanding] over the span of a few days, and rent a car in the meantime so I can still get around.

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

No trip today due to all-day club activities. And in terms of summer vacation, I'm trying to see what there is to do in Niigata, which is much closer than Hokkaido. I'll see where I get with those plans.

-wp