Roadtrip

My husband is a keen cyclist. He participates in various bike events around No. California throughout the year. This year (as well as last) he's taken part in a ride down in So Cal put on by a former pro-cyclist called Phil Gaimon. Phil likes cookies and long rides (and presumably other things), so his event is called Phil's Cookie Fondo. The two-day event took place in Malibu this year, and I tagged along for the journey. 

An image from a Cookie Fondo past. 

Friday night, we drove down to LA county and stayed in a hotel that bills itself as 'upscale' located in a business park just off HWY 101. I was to swim in the hotel pool while the husband was out pedaling. When looking at potential places online, I had forgotten that hotel photos can be a bit deceiving. While it was true that the hotel we stayed in indeed had a pool, it was more of a wading pool and highly salinated. I accidentally ingested a bit of the pool water and it was like drinking the remnants of a salt-water gargle glass. Mouth firmly closed unless I needed to breathe, I took that darn pool as a challenge and swam laps for about 30 minutes anyway. 

The hubs returned from his ride in the afternoon on Saturday. I came up from the pool and we lazed about the hotel before making our way out to a beach in Malibu for a lie-down in the beach tent. We couldn't remember where we'd packed the newspapers, so a crossword was not on the cards. 

At Dume State Beach, Malibu

As the day wore on, my husband's ankle started to ache. He wasn't sure what the cause was, but it began to hurt to the degree that he felt he couldn't do the second ride on Sunday. We drove home that day instead. 

On the drive down to LA, our scenic route detour was re-routed due to what appeared to be wildfire. This image was our view of the fire from the car as we made our ascent up HWY 154. It wasn't clear at this point that what we were seeing would impact our travel. 

Eventually, a long line of cars, ours included, were stopped on the mountain with little understanding as to what was happening. Suddenly, emergency vehicles, sirens ablaze, were jamming past us. At that point, other motorists began turning their cars around and heading back to HWY 101. After a few minutes, we opted to do the same. 

  

About a mile back down the hill we saw this: 

Highway patrol had closed the roadway to through traffic. Funny thing was a bunch of motorists were still stopped up the hill beyond this closure. As we waited for the officer to wave us forward, we wondered who was being sent up the hill to notify the others who had not yet turned around, and were, presumably, still waiting to be allowed to proceed over the mountain.