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.

I was on a free bike, wearing a free helmet, in a free country, riding free as a bird along the Cherry Creek bike path when I came around a corner and saw a man at a table next to a sign that said "Free Water and Sunscreen."

I thought it might be an omen.

The man introduced himself as Robert and said the booth was one of several set up especially for the convention by a coalition of Denver churches.

"Just trying to do what the Bible says," said Robert as he reached into a cooler and tossed me a bottle of Life Water. "It doesn't say protest, it says serve."

I knew an opening when I saw one.

"Well then, could you serve me up a free ticket to Obama's speech?"

Robert said he would if he could but he couldn't.

"I don't know anybody who has one of those tickets," he said.

Next I stopped some Denver policewomen who were doing such a good job guarding an entrance to the Pepsi Center that they looked totally bored.

"Arrested anybody trying to scalp Obama speech tickets?" I asked.

"We haven't seen a single ticket scalper all week," said officer K. Rogers. She said it wasn't at all like the World Series last fall, when people were selling tickets like crazy at 20th and Blake Street.

I pedaled over to 20th and Blake, opposite the entrance to Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies

No one was there.

Inside a sports apparel store called "Sportsfan," Phil Walmsley was wearing an "Obama '08" hat as he described the ticket-selling frenzy last October when the Rockies played the Boston Red Sox.

"Scalpers were everywhere," he said. "Lots of Boston fans were willing to pay big money."

"I guess politics is a different ball game," he shrugged.

I said I guessed so too.

I retraced my steps along Cherry Creek to head uptown and turn in my free bike, utterly defeated but oddly proud of all those unseen ticket-holders hanging onto their seats. Who'd have thought? A free ticket to a speech is the toughest ticket in the country.

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Lee Benson is filing columns daily from the Democratic National Convention. You can e-mail him at benson@desnews.com.