DENVER — Three days of searching and it's starting to look grim.

Going in, I didn't think it would be that much of a problem, finding a ticket to Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight.

Chiefly, this optimism was based on 75,000 seats at INVESCO Field, home of the Denver Broncos and site of the speech. That's a lot of seats. Plus, the seats are free. Plus, it's not a football game, or even a monster truck pull, it's a speech. I figured someone would have a spare.

But whoever said never take anything for granted when it comes to politics — and if someone didn't say that they should have — was right.

Tickets are as scarce around here as John McCain tributes.

I might have gotten in as a member of the media, but the allotment for the Deseret News is two tickets, and we have a team of three here on the ground: Bob Bernick Jr. and Lee Davidson in addition to myself.

This did not bode well for me. Bernick and Davidson have been covering politics since almost before I was born. They know how to spell filibuster. They know their way around both sides of the aisle. Plus, they got here first.

They suggested I talk to the Utah delegation, which I did. Todd Taylor, executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, said the party didn't have any more tickets and they didn't get nearly as many as they wanted in the first place, but he was sympathetic to my cause and gave me some sound advice.

"Uh, you know, pray," he said.

I asked Bill Orton. You'd think a former congressman would have plenty of connections.

And he did have tickets.

"For me, my boys, and my wife," he said, "and I had to fight like a banshee to get those."

I asked superdelegate Karen Hale if she had any spares. Clearly a compassionate sort of person who doesn't like to say no, she gave me her cell number. "Call me if you get desperate," she said.

I even tried other media. I talked to Chris Vanocur of Channel 4, who said, "I'd love to give you my ticket, but then you'd have to do my live shot."

And I tried online — only to discover that the Democrats threatened that anyone selling a ticket on Web sites such as Craigslist or eBay or Stubhub would have their barcodes invalidated, shutting down the scalping business cold.

I know. I thought the same thing. What is this country coming to?

On Wednesday, I went to plan F — cruise the streets of downtown Denver until I found someone selling free tickets.

I started at the "Freewheelin"' stand at 17th and Lincoln — one of about a dozen places around town where Humana, the health organization, is renting bicycles for free. All you do is give them your credit card for a totally refundable deposit (if you don't wreck the bike) and they give you a bike for the day — in my case a Schwinn one-speed with a carrying case in front.