Barbara Lawlor, Central City.   When Janice Sayles hit the pedal to the metal, I was slammed against the back of the seat, my head jammed skyward and then bounced forward as she shifted gears, exploding uphill with the roar of a mighty engine in a small car. I heard an exultant scream wailing above the motor blast and realized it was me.

I was riding in the passenger seat of one of hundreds of hot rods gathered in Central City, to manifest their motor muscle, to revel in the thrill of speed, sound and historical excellence and creativity in design at the fifth annual Hot Rod Hill Climb.

In general, I avoid loud engines, smelly exhaust fumes, speeding around uphill switchbacks, crowds and traffic. But there was something about taking off from a dead stop to full speed ahead that awoke sensations of hitting the top of the tracks on the roller coaster ride at the Wisconsin State Fair. Arms in the air, hair blowing in the wind, the rush, the high of almost flying. We headed up into a cobalt sky on Saturday morning, up the Central City Parkway where spectators gathered at the turns, capturing head-on shots of the hot rods blurring toward them in streams of chrome and color.

I was covering the annual event for the Mountain-Ear Newspaper, looking for arty shots of the rods, when I saw a woman in a smaller car in the driver’s seat revving the engine as she waited for her turn to head onto the course. Prodded on by the fact that I had never ridden in a hot rod, I walked up to her primer red, snazzy 1927 Ford Roadster and asked, “Would you like a passenger?”

“Sure,” she said. “Get in.”

As we waited for our turn to take off, she talked about her passion for fast cars and how she came to be one of two female dragster racers at the Bandimere speed races. She became interested in drag racing through a friend, so her husband and his friends built her a flathead engine hot rod. She worked as an administrative assistant for an insurance company and was 40 years old when she jumped into her roadster and gassed it.

Five years ago she attended the Georgetown Hill Climb event and then two years ago, came up to Central City to participate in their fledgling advance into the mountain climb circuit.

The CC event begins at the downtown entrance to the parkway. Exhaust fumes spew over the crowd in the bleachers, tires screech as they lay rubber and engines rumble and then roar. Sometimes the beasts get up to the start and refuse to play and have to be shouldered out of the way. Each car is waved on by the bare-footed, checkered flag-swishing starter, her long hair and big smile a tradition at the start, reminiscent of the 50’s drag race film scenes.

The ride isn’t long, even way too short, as it was a glorious, golden Colorado mountain day. Heading back down the hill into Central City was like descending into a pond of glitzy jewelry, sparkling below, overflowing the parking lots and Main Street.

Food vendors, rod souvenirs, down-home bands, car talk and a rendezvous at Base Camp Saturday night, ending with a Peak to Peak Parade that wound north through Nederland and up the highway. Couldn’t have asked for more a perfect day.

Janice says the hill climb exceeds street excitement.

“You get to drive as fast as you safely can. You can’t do that in the city. I get to do something that most people don’t get to do. Even the Queen once drove a hot rod back in the day and was known to work on her own car.

She would do her wave as she zoomed past the crowd.”

Janice ran the course and then got back in line to do it again. As she worked her way toward the start, a spectator in a leather helmet with tattooed arms looked at her hot rod and said, “This is bad ass.”

She gave him a thumbs up.

(Originally published in the September 20, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)