Good Times Roll at The Wheel as Highway 33 Reopens at Last

For six months, bartender Michele Weakly weathered the excruciatingly slow nights with her small posse of loyal customers.

She sometimes popped corn while she and her co-workers played checkers or chess and watched old movies. They watched and they waited for the sound of the bar’s heavy wooden front door to swing open.

Finally, their wait is over. A 15-mile section of California 33--shut down by a landslide since February--reopened Monday.

Beyond the bar, the road’s reopening means that hikers, anglers and campers can return to some of their favorite recreational spots.

Weakly expects the steady stream of customers who used to stop at The Wheel restaurant and bar along California 33 en route to Bakersfield will return and breathe life back into the place.

“You can tell people The Wheel is still rockin’ and rollin’,” said bar co-owner John Sullivan in his best Wolfman Jack impersonation.

Sullivan pointed out the window, where a truck could be seen snaking up the windy route toward the area where the massive landslide hit six months ago during El Nino-driven storms. “Hey, here comes a cement truck to our rescue,” Sullivan said.

Since the slide, Caltrans crews have been working practically nonstop clearing the mountain of dirt--1 million cubic yards to date--from the road.

On Monday, crew members removed the signs posted at the foot of California 33 in Ojai that declared the road closed. It was a milestone move for exhausted workers.

“Everybody is very tired,” said Caltrans supervisor Wayne Johnson. “They’ve been working 12 to 14 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. It’s been a lot of really hard work.”

But the work is not over. Although the road is open, it will be three months more before the job is completed. More dirt must be cleared, then the road must be repaired, repaved and re-striped.

While the work winds down, Caltrans crew members will be at the project site around the clock flagging motorists around the construction area. Caltrans spokeswoman Jeanne Bonfilio said officials decided to reopen the road early to accommodate motorists.

“We’ve received scores and scores of calls from people wanting to get through to camp, hike, hunt and fish,” Bonfilio said. “It’s such a popular area for outdoors people. We felt we could reopen the road safely, and we felt that the time had come.”

Bonfilio warned that there could still be delays of up to one hour at the project spot.

“It’s better than the three or four hours it takes to drive all the way around,” she said, referring to the only alternative route that forces motorists to drive through Los Angeles County.

Phil Adcock agrees.

On Monday morning, the 36-year-old Ventura resident heard a radio report that the highway was open. An avid catch-and-release angler, he grabbed his fishing gear, jumped in his car and headed for Sespe River.

“I figured the creek hasn’t been fished for pretty close to a year,” Adcock said before taking a swill from his cold mug of beer at The Wheel. “There might be lots of baby trout in there.”

Jennifer Wanders was also elated by the news. Wanders, 16, who lives in Ojai, misses her frequent visits to the swimming holes at Lion’s Camp, just beyond the point where the road was blocked.

“This is an important day to a lot of teenagers,” she said while fixing a latte at Bill Baker’s Bakery in downtown Ojai.

Weakly and others at The Wheel plan to throw a party, tentatively set for Sunday.

“We want to strip a giant ribbon across the highway and have a ribbon-cutting ceremony,” Weakly said. “We want to invite all the Caltrans workers we’ve gotten to know over the months.”