“Hey, Ramirez,” the voice boomed from a hill, echoed through the pines and bounced off the blue Colorado sky. “Do you want some hotdogs?”

Ernesto Ramirez, who lives in Aurora, sat on the side of a road, a sharp bend, just above Glen Cove at Pikes Peak, known as “America’s Mountain.” He was driver No. 757. Ramirez, who had parked his Mitsubishi Evolution just a few paces away, had been exchanging comments with several dozen fans who had come to see the 103rd Pikes Peak International Hill Climb on Sunday.

Except the fans didn’t really see a race.

As one spectator ruefully said, “It turned out to be a very expensive car show.”

Organizers had cut this year’s 156-turn, 12.42-mile Race to the Clouds by 60% and decided that the finish line would be Glen Cove, instead of at the top peak, after winds blasted the summit with speeds of at least 80 miles per hour. It was too dangerous for the drivers to navigate the winding road under those conditions.

The hundred or so fans had climbed up to Cove Creek, just above Glen Cove, shortly after midnight on Saturday. Many camped by the side of the road, with coolers and chairs and tents, though the latter never went up. The whistling winds had battered the area, routinely blowing away unoccupied chairs.

The fans waited for the race to start, tired from a lack of sleep and fighting the dead cold but giddy with anticipation.

And they waited and waited and waited.

My brother-in-law heard about the Hill Climb a few years back. An engineer by training, he had long been fascinated by powerful car engines. 

He and his wife — my spouse’s sister — flew from Arizona on Saturday and spent the afternoon preparing for — we didn’t know it then — a kind of misadventure.

For our gear, we brought a cooler, a small tent (unusable with the high winds), thermal blankets (they didn’t really work), and food (too much).

The best gear, it turned out, was a hammock. I tied it to two pines and our boy, now 14, slept like a baby, suspended from the ground, with the winds slightly rocking him.

It took a lot of walking, but by 3:30 a.m., our little camp by the side of the road was all set up. I had picked out a spot behind two boulders, calculating that, if one of the drivers spun out of control and veered off course, they’d hit the big rocks and keep our boy safe.

“The wind gods are not happy, dad,” he told me.

Our boy had adopted the language of the Romans and the Greeks. The gods, petty tyrants with impulses worse than humans, are in charge. To appease them requires sacrifice. And even then, they often didn’t care. 

“The river gods won’t give up the trout, dad.”

“The gods are mocking us, dad.”

“Should we sacrifice a goat to Zeus, dad?”

Half the time he’s joking; the other half he’s cursing at them.

By 5 a.m., the wind remained relentless, and the trees groaned and swayed. We slept – or tried to – on uneven ground, separated from the rocks and soil with a thin earth pad. I had enveloped our kiddo in thermal blankets. He was cold, but he enjoyed watching the stars – crystals just hanging from the sky. The moon was crescent. If it had a handle, it might have been a Turkish Kilij.

By 6 a.m., I could see the sunlight begin to illuminate the black sky, just above the barren, steep climb to the peak, a formidable wall that blocked out the sun until it was directly above us.

By 7 a.m., it became clear the organizers had a major issue at hand. The fast winds showed no signs of slowing down. They delayed the start of the race.

By 10 a.m., word spread that the show had begun – but the drivers will no longer race to the peak. Instead, they would finish at Glen Cove. The problem was obvious: We were above Glen Cove. The gods had other plans, and we were out of their favor. One staffer said we can’t really go down to Glen Cove – at least not by using the road. Under the new plan, the drivers would finish at Glen Cove and then drive up to Cove Creek, where they would line up the cars by the side of the road.

If there’s any silver lining — we could see all the cars up close.

That gave Adam, one of the spectators, little comfort.

“Maybe they could refund us — or give us free tickets to the same area next year,” Adam said.

“We hoped to see a race. It turned out to be a very expensive car show,” he added, referring to the row of cars that had just completed the race.

Hudson, from Denver, said he took a “power nap of two hours” to ensure he and his friends reached Cove Creek before the cutoff time.

“I probably burned my car’s clutch coming here,” he said.

“So, it wasn’t the experience I hoped for.”

“But,” he added, “it is what it is. There’s always next year. And, hey, we are atop America’s Mountain.”

Lawrence, an engineering student from Germany, said he and his colleagues, who had just completed an international rocket launching tournament in Midland, Texas, decided to watch the Hill Climb before going back to Europe.

“We’re all engineering students,” he said. “So, we’re all crazy about beautiful engines.”

Joaquin, another spectator, didn’t really know what to expect.

“It’s awesome,” he said.

A resident of Denver, he had brought his entire family to Cove Creek.

His 5-year-old daughter, he said, had a blast.

It would have been great to see the race up close. He and everybody else at Cove Creek and at the viewing stations at higher altitudes, who had now no way of seeing the race unless they hiked back down, had bought tickets costing hundreds of dollars.

But, for Joaquin, spending the day with his family — his two adult sons came — and seeing the joy on his daughter’s face were the real prize.

“It’s a beautiful day. It’s a great day to view race cars, and my whole family is with me,” he said.

Ramirez, driver No. 757, answered the spectator asking about whether he wants a hot dog with a thumbs up. And the crowd erupted in cheers.

“Ketchup?” the spectator asked.

Thumbs up. Cheers.

“Mustard?”

Thumbs up. Cheers.

Later, I saw a guy with a hot dog in hand finding his way down the hill amid fallen logs and shrubs to reach Ramirez.

“He doesn’t know it yet,” the man said, “but I also brought him beer.”

The crowd, who had gathered by the road, within earshot of Ramirez, shouted and clapped every time a driver, who had just completed the race at Glen Cove, drove past the bend on the way to where the rest of the finishers had stopped. Another driver stepped out of his high-powered horse and shook hands with people. Whether he knew it, he made it special for the fans and, in a way, tried to save the situation. 

Handed a lemon, both drivers and spectators had made a lemonade out of the situation.

Three cars, out of some 70, gave them a solid spin. Most drivers throttled their engines, breaking the air with a loud roar from their machines, their way of giving out a war cry just after conquering the enemy.

“Hey, Ramirez!” the man who gave the driver a hot dog, yelled again from the hill. “Are you going to drink that beer?”

“Drink that beer! Drink that beer! Drink that beer!” the spectators began chanting.

With the race finishing early, we made our way down to the parking lot and joined the line of modernity snaking their way back to civilization.

“That was a blast,” my brother-in-law said. “Let’s do it again next year!”