One of the hazards of a 17-hour fighter mission is that, eventually, you have to pee—which is why Piddle Packs exist. And which led to the funniest radio call I ever heard. In the mid-90s, six F-15s flew nonstop from Langley AFB to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Scheduled for 15.7 hours, butt-in-seat time was closer to 17. Twelve aerial refuelings. Go pills temporarily banned. Enough chocolate-covered coffee beans to keep a small village awake. The Air Force provided inflight meals: little bags of chicken, beef, and cheese, plus chips and cookies. The meat and cheese came in individual zip-lock bags. No bran muffins. No bran cookies. No bran anything. Urinating while wearing an exposure suit was difficult enough without adding that complication. Now, about those Piddle Packs. The originals were thick plastic bags with a compressed sponge to absorb urine. You rolled the top and secured it with a heavy wire twist-tie. Then someone “improved” them. The sponge became silica-gel pellets (we called it Margarita Mix) and the bag closed with a zip-lock. Which brings me back to that radio call. Middle of the night over the Strait of Gibraltar. Eight hours in, roughly eight hours to go. It was dark. Everyone was tired. Dawn was still hours away. And the inflight meal and the new Piddle Packs had identical zip-lock closures. Sounding thoroughly dejected, Harass 6 keyed the mic: “Well, I won't know for certain until sunrise, but I'm pretty sure I just pissed in my chicken chunks.” We never did find out which bag he used. Some mysteries are better left unsolved.