Before I begin blogging about my time in Cleveland, there are a few loose threads in Indianapolis to take care of.

Most of the very few news assignments I had during my time in Indy were pretty forgettable.

I did cover a few political speeches and once trekked out to a truck stop on I-65, north of Indy, to interview truckers during a national transportation strike. And I got to interview singer Petula Clark in her hotel room.

I was sitting at my desk in the office one weekday afternoon when the news editor called me over and said, "Petula Clark is in town for a performance and her PR lady said we could send somebody over to do an interview. You're it."

That sounded like a fun time to me, especially since I liked her music. And did I mention she was really good looking?

I rang the doorbell of her suite at the hotel and she opened the door, dressed in some sort of silk pajama outfit and looking very cute but a bit frazzled. She asked me in and as I entered I heard a gruff male voice: "You have 10 minutes."

Her husband stood over us like a guard dog for the entire interview, as if he expected me to attack his wife at any moment. She answered my very banal questions without much enthusiasm but, as I was thanking her and standing to leave, she said, "I apologize for the way we acted. I got a threatening letter yesterday and neither of us got much sleep."

That woke me up. I asked a few more questions about the letter and if they had reported it to the police. They had.

I went back to the bureau and called the police department. A detective told me they couldn't comment on an ongoing case, but that gave me enough to write the story.

Ms. Clark performed that night at the Indiana Theater and left town the next day, unharmed. But I had gotten a pretty interesting story in the end.

Without question, though, the most interesting and, in the end, fun one was in August of 1974 when Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the older daughter of President Richard Nixon was hospitalized in Indianapolis due to a ruptured ovarian cyst. She had been working for Conde Nast magazine, which was headquartered in Indy.

The then-25-year-old Julie was in University Hospital on the west side of Indianapolis for several days. Her husband and her mother, Pat Nixon, were there to oversee things, along with several secret service agents. President Nixon made a quick trip following the surgery and had a brief, private visit.

Meanwhile, the AP sent a photographer and staffer to the hospital each day, hoping to catch a picture or an interview with a Nixon family member. Because of days off for the news people in the bureau, I was assigned to stake out the hospital on the day after the surgery.

Chuck Robinson, the Indiana staff photographer for AP, and I spent the morning milling around the outside of the hospital, behind a rope barrier that the police had set up. Nothing was happening and it quickly got boring.

Finally, Chuck said, "I've covered stories here before and there's a back way in. You want to see if we can find someone to talk to?"

I said, "Sure." And off we went.

We were able to enter the hospital through the back door and were standing in the hallway near a service elevator when its doors opened. Inside were Pat Nixon and two men in dark suits, obviously secret service.

Chuck and I were wearing media ID cards hung from our necks, so nobody got too startled as they walked past toward the outside door. It appeared Mrs. Nixon simply wanted to get some air after being stuck inside that hospital room for several days.

Chuck and I got some nasty looks from the secret service guys, but he also got some images of Mrs. Nixon as she walked past. I got nothing. He followed them outside to continue snapping pictures and I stayed inside.

As Mrs. Nixon walked back toward a elevator a few minutes later, I caught her eye and asked, "How's Julie, Mrs. Nixon?"

She stopped, glanced at the big AP on my ID card and said, "The surgery went well and she's doing just fine. She's starting to get upset about having to stay in bed. But she'll be out of here soon."

That was how we got exclusive pictures and quotes that no one else had. Sometimes, you just get lucky.

I spent a lot of time in the AP office during my five years in Indiana. In those days, the office was located on the fourth floor of the Indianapolis Star-News building in downtown Indy. We had large, waist-to-ceiling windows that faced the parking lot at the rear of the building.

One stormy Sunday afternoon, I was alone in the office. It was spring and the weather was very unpredictable. There was little going on and my main jobs that day were updating  (basically rewriting) the hourly broadcast headlines and putting weather advisories from The National Weather Service on the state wire.

There were tornadoes spotted in several areas around the state and it was getting to look a bit eerie outside. I walked over to those big rear windows and looked up the sky. As I watched the swirling clouds turn from black to a sickly green, I thought, "This could be very bad."

Suddenly, the spout of a tornado poked through the clouds and dropped to the ground right in the middle of that, thankfully empty parking lot behind the building. I thought about ducking  below the windows, but the tornado quickly bounced back up into the clouds with no apparent damage. The close call left me a bit breathless.

Minutes later, the weather service reported a tornado had touched down less than a mile from the office, hitting _ you guessed it _ a trailer park. Thankfully again, no one was hurt. But that was my most close and personal contact with a tornado.

Another boring day in the Indianapolis office is the reason I'm a coffee addict today.

I was filling in for overnight editor Marty Anderson on a Sunday night and absolutely nothing was happening. Again, I was rewriting the hourly broadcast headlines because there was nothing new to put in them.

The phones weren't ringing and there was nothing to pick up from the Star's morning editions and nothing of interest on the television or the radio. I was pacing the floor in boredom.

Around 3 a.m. I was walking aimless through the office, just killing time. As I walked back through the area used by the technicians, I noticed a coffee maker. My parents had both been big coffee drinkers, but I was never really interested. Looking at the coffee maker, though, I thought, "People say it helps keep you awake."

I found a package of ground coffee, figured out how to put it into the coffee maker _ although I had no idea how much to put in _ added water to the reservoir and turned it on. To my surprise, I wound up with a pot of decent looking and smelling coffee.

I had finished the entire pot before the morning guy came in to relieve me at 6 a.m. From that day to now, I'm a regular coffee drinker and one of those lucky people who can drink half a pot of regular coffee before bed time and still sleep through the night.

And I might never have tried it if I hadn't been so bored that night in Indy.

I want to mention one other highlight of my time in Indy that was a direct result of working for the AP.

We lived on the north side of Indianapolis, just off 38th Street, a main east-west city artery. Also on 38th Street, not far away, was the State Fairgrounds. Much to my delight, I found that AP got free passes to the annual state fair because we occasionally covered events.

Our first summer in Indy, before we had kids, I asked Judy if she'd like to go to the fair for lunch. I wasn't going to work until 4 p.m. and her days off were in the middle of the week. The passes included parking. We drove over, enjoyed corn dogs for lunch, did some people watching and went home.

It was so much fun, we did that same thing for five straight days _ the last three with me picking up Judy during her lunch hour at the zoo, which was also near the fairgrounds. I'm not sure if I've ever had a corn dog since, but that was definitely a lot of fun.

And Judy also got me up very, very early a couple of times in future years to run over to the fairgrounds to watch sheep shearing, rooster crowing and pig racing, among other things. I told you this girl is interested in everything.

Since I told the story about getting Judy to the hospital barely in time for the birth of our wonderful Lanni Nicole, I feel obligated to tell a story about our first-born, Tory Max.

Being nervous first-time parents, we went to the hospital too soon. But they admitted Judy, who was very uncomfortable, and we then sat through 12 hours of labor. The maternity area at Methodist Hospital was being renovated and we were in an area curtained off from several other soon-to-be mothers in the same room.

One of them was scared to death and spent a lot of time screaming and crying. Judy, who was very calm, looked up at one point and said in a half-whisper, "Somebody please give that woman a baby."

Finally, it was time. They wheeled Judy to the birth room and I put on my gown and booties and followed moments later. When I got there, the doctor said, "Any minute now."

Judy looked over at me and said, "Get my purse out." I said, "You don't need your purse. Just concentrate on what's going on here."

She glared at me and said, "Get my purse out, please."

I shrugged and reached into the clear plastic bag that contained Judy's personal items and fished out the purse and handed it to her.

She reached in and took out an oblong piece of colorful paper and a paper punch. She then handed me back the purse, punched a hole in the paper and handed it to me. It was a ticket she had made up for me to attend the birth of our son.

"You being a sports writer, I thought it was only proper that you have the right credential," she said with a smile and a wince. Moments later, Tory came into the world.

So that's pretty much all the highlights and lowlights from my five years in Indy. Now, on to Cleveland.