Ron Kantowski watches the Mad Dash for seats at the rodeo that are like bucking broncos - you can be thrown right off

Thursday, Dec. 13, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

1. YOUR SEAT, RIGHT HERE

In the Mad Dash program at the National Finals Rodeo, tickets for unoccupied balcony seats can be purchased for $39.50. The problem? Should the rightful owner arrive, you have to move.

2. GETTING THE CHUTE

A cold beer helps pass the time while you wait for the rightful seat owners to show up. Dale and Deb Bolk of Fort Collins, Colo., wanted seats above the chutes and wound up getting them. "And we only had to move twice," Dale said.

3. SAY 'NO' TO SCALPERS

Buy a ticket from a - wink, wink - ticket broker? Where's the adventure in that? Although there were assigned seats available at reasonable prices, Dale and Deb stuck with their plan to "do the dash."

4. HELLO, COWBOY!

Before climbing the steps to the sold-out NFR, Dale shared this bit of Western philosophy with an inquisitive stranger: "The best way to care for horses is to have friends who have horses."

5. MORE LIBATIONS

See No. 2. Sometimes a guy needs more than one beer to survive a Mad Dash for rodeo seats. In one hidden pocket, Dale has a flask of vodka and cranberry. And secreted up his sleeve is another flask with some unnamed hootch.

When I heard about the Mad Dash program at the National Finals Rodeo, the first thing that crossed my mind was the climactic scene in "Far and Away" where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman raced across the Oklahoma plain to plant their stake in the ground during the Oklahoma Land Run of 1893.

I figured getting a seat at the Thomas & Mack Center during the NFR, widely recognized as the "toughest ticket in town," would have to be at least as problematic. Paying $39.50 for an undetermined balcony seat that already had been sold to somebody else, then dashing like mad for the first empty one, plopping down in it, and crossing your fingers, hoping like mad its rightful owner wouldn't show to claim it, seemed like a crazy idea.

I'd compare it to that day in the corral when two cowpokes were chewing the fat and one said to the other, "So, pardner, just what would it take, anyway, for you to climb on the back of that ornery ol' bull over there?"

About half-past five on Tuesday, Tom and Nicole arrived at the NFR ticket window. Only their names were Dale and Deb. And they hadn't come from Ireland, but from Fort Collins, Colo.

This wasn't, as the football analysts like to say, their first rodeo. Heck, Cheyenne is just up the road a piece from their hometown and the Frontier Days are a hoot. But this was their first National Finals Rodeo.

That's why Deb went online to purchase tickets in June. The NFR being the Super Bowl of rodeo and all, she figured you had to get tickets in advance. Far and away in advance. She was stunned to learn the Finals had been sold out for months. Basically, since the day after last year's Finals.

That's when Dale and Deb Bolk decided it was time for another adventure.

They had met on the Internet. That turned out to be an excellent adventure. Infatuated with Western culture, they had traveled the old Bozeman Trail, from Fort Laramie in central Wyoming to the Big Sky of Montana, in a covered wagon - just like the settlers had in 1870 when they set out for Oregon in search of gold. That turned out to be an excellent adventure, too.

So when they strolled up to the box office and a scalper tried to sell them two tickets downstairs at a reasonable price, Dale and Deb Bolk said, "No thanks." This was going to be an adventure and how in tarnation can buying an assigned seat be considered an adventure?

"We might be up in the nosebleed section, up there against the wall somewhere," said Dale, a semiretired marketing executive for John Deere, which probably explains why he owns seven tractors despite living under streetlights in Fort Collins. "That's all right. We'll find a seat somewhere."

Then he reached into a secret compartment in his Western jacket to pull out the bottle of Bud Light he had opened in the taxi on the way over. He reached into another hidden pocket to show me a flask. Vodka and cranberry. Then he reached up his sleeve, Lance Burton-style, to reveal a smaller silver flask with the Harley-Davidson logo on it. It might as well have said "XXX." This was Granny Clampett's jug. The hard stuff. The stuff that gets you through a Colorado State football game these days.

I knew right then that even if Dale and Deb Bolk didn't get seats, they still were going to enjoy the rodeo.

Dale scouted out two above the chutes, because "that's where the action is." When they sat down, it was 5:45 p.m. It was so early they were playing the Ohio Express - the Ohio Express! - over the public address system. The ropin' and ridin' wouldn't start for another hour.

Yummy, yummy, yummy. Deb Bolk went to the concession stand, to put a charbroiled chicken sandwich in her tummy.

We sat and chatted as the seats around them began to fill up. Slowly. Steadily. Inexorably. It was like the balcony at the Thomas & Mack Center had absorbed a direct hit and was taking on water, like in one of those submarine movies. Only the water was breathing and wearing leather vests and black hats.

I lost sight of Dale and Deb Bolk right after Tracy Byrd sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." If nobody showed up to claim the seats they were sitting in by 7:15, they would be theirs.

Apparently, somebody had. When I turned to look for Dale and Deb, Hoss and Little Joe were sitting in their seats.

I was about to head for the Ponderosa my own self when I passed Dale on the stairs. Apparently, he had gone out to replenish what was in his secret compartments.

It was 7:16. Their excellent adventure was over. Dale and Deb Bolk had planted their flag in Section 232, Row K, Seats 1 and 2. Aisle seats. Above the chutes.

Tom and Nicole would have been proud.