Pizza Quest

This is me, a couple of days ago, standing in front of what is widely considered to be the best joint for Calzones and Strombolis on Victory Base Complex: North End Pizza.


The pizza is reportedly not even as good as Pizza Hut (and Pizza Hut is a lot closer to where I am), but I had a couple slices and it was pretty good for the middle of Iraq. The interesting part isn't really the pizza though - it's how my friend and I got to North End Pizza after 45 minutes, a lost hat, good directions we didn't follow, and a sigh of relief the place took credit cards ...

It all began with Sergeant First Class Joshua Crews asking me if I had gone to eat around lunchtime. If I hadn't, he said, he reserved the Ford Explorer for our section (there's an online calendar where you can check it out) and was headed for the "famous" North End Pizza. I had only seen the place one time, and I didn't even eat that time; one of the guys I replaced took me on a tour of all the small bazaar shops and secret hajji shacks where you can buy iPhone clones, copied movies, Asian soft drinks, and knock-off Nike shoes all under the same roof. I thought it would be a welcome change from the dining facility, even one like we have (see Autumn's post on Surf 'n Turf ...). Sergeant Crews asked if I knew where it was two seconds before I was going to ask him the same thing. Ugh. It couldn't be that hard to find, not the "famous" North End Pizza, could it?

We got in the truck and started out for Camp Liberty, connected to Camp Victory by a short road, all within the main wall for Victory Base Complex (or VBC for short). VBC is a consolidated base made out of six smaller bases and the Baghdad airport, after they grew so much it was easier just to join up their outer walls and make it one huge wall. We stowed our weapons in the back seat, and I rolled up my Boonie hat on my lap. In the five minutes or so it takes to get there, we concurred that we should start by the PX (department store on Army bases) since we both recalled it not being too far from there. There would also be lots of people to ask, of course.

5 minutes in: When we got to the four-way intersection by the PX parking lot, we picked a direction and went for it. 200 yards later, we seemed to be headed out to a wasteland of gravel and parked armored vehicles - no pizza joints here. As we turned around, we came upon a soldier and thought it would be prudent to ask for directions - my window wasn't working, so it must have looked strange to see an SUV roll up with the door opening! The soldier had just gotten here himself, and had never heard of the place. We recommended it, I closed the door and we moved on.

10 minutes in: Back to the 4-way intersection, we took the opposite direction we took before and traveled a mile or two. This time, we were well within habitable areas, with offices and soldiers walking everywhere (surrounded by concrete barriers, but recognizable nonetheless). Still, no restaurants. After a few minutes, we went back to the intersection and entered the PX parking lot. There was one more possible way from the 4-way intersection, but we asked for directions again, this time from a civilian who looked like he'd spent a couple tours over here already.

"North End Pizza? Of course! It's right over there - go back the way you just came, veer right, look for Pad 12, turn right off the road after the MWR (*Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) facility, follow the wall of trailers around to the motor pool, keep left, and you'll see the sign ..."

Whew! We thanked him and he wished us luck. I asked Sergeant Crews if he knew whether North End took credit cards. He didn't know, but only had them to pay with himself. Cash over here is difficult to get, and the military would really rather you pay with a declining balance card you get when you first arrive. Everyone took the declining balance card, but you were rolling the dice with credit and even cash. If we finally managed to find this place but they didn't take credit, it would be a half-hour round trip to the finance office to get cash or recharge our cards at a kiosk, which we both knew meant we were just going to drive to the dining facility and eat sliced melon.

25 minutes in: Ok, we had the directions up to "veer right", and I say that because when we went back this second time, we didn't do that. After bouncing around some more off road, we asked a THIRD time for directions, to which we got a fairly accurate response ... just as I checked for my hat. It was gone! Not good! You need a specific hat when you are in uniform, and there are people who walk around with nothing to do but write asinine policy, parking tickets, and correct you on your uniform. I thought about where it could have been lost; I know I rolled it up on my lap when I got in. Then, we went to the 4-way, then I ... opened ... the ... door ... . Sergeant Crews asked me if I wanted to go back, and I thought about it until he asked again. Hat first, or pizza first? On the one hand, we were almost there, but on the other, anyone could pick up that hat and I would be without one until I got somewhere I could buy one, and we were already going to be late getting back from lunch.

35 minutes in: We must have driven by 4 pads already, and woven through all of the possible streets, such as they were, looking for the phantom sign that we could use to navigate to the life-giving pizza. I regretted not going back for the hat a little, but I figured I risked losing it either way and there was no sense in getting yelled at for a stupid hat on an empty stomach. Besides, I'm a Chief Warrant Officer, and if you don't get yelled at for something like that at least once a week, you don't get promoted on time (or so our reputation would have you believe). We rounded a corner from one of the small side trails, looked up and saw it ... NORTH END PIZZA! There was a short moment of silence as we approached the sign, high enough above the concrete barriers to see from where we were, to check for the familiar Mastercard, Visa, or Amex logos ... and there they were, like three financial pepperoni squares on a delicious slice of victory (small V).

45 minutes in: "Sergeant Crews, would you mind taking my picture in front of the menu here? I want to post it on the blog ..."

We got it to go. A couple soldiers came and also placed an order, and we all stood around for another awkward silence as I got the "eye" from the senior sergeant in their group for standing around without a hat. The order came eventually, and when Sergeant Crews got his, we went back to the initial stop for directions to find a car where we pulled in. Ugh again. My hat was probably under a tire, if not halfway to Camp Victory, tumbling like a tumbleweed in Tombstone. I walked around to the front of the car to find the hat on the ground, against my expectations but making me feel pretty good about not detouring back and ending up being beaten by an obscure pizza joint!

1 hour in: We headed back and clocked in at around an hour and ten or an hour and fifteen minutes, still with uneaten food in hand. We got the "where the hell have you guys been??". I briefly considered telling the whole story, but we gave them a more believable one:

"We were bored of sitting in here, so we cruised around Camp Liberty, wasting gas and going to the hajji shops ..."

Father Time

Time is a strange and nebulous thing. Sometimes it passes slowly, and sometimes it
passes so quickly that I can hardly keep up. While on deployment, the
first week of training in Georgia and the first week in Bagram passed
with miserable slowness. Once my feet were wet in the clinic and ICU, though,
time began to accelerate and accelerate such that I can hardly believe I
have already been here three weeks!

The act of telling time in a war zone is somewhat nontraditional. For one thing,
there are two (or three, or four) sets of clocks in most rooms. One is
inevitably set to "zulu" time, and in fact all of our official
correspondence - including patient records - is communicated in zulu
time. The other clocks tells local time (which is zulu plus 4.5 hours
... and whoever decided that it would be a good idea to add
four-and-a-HALF hours to standard time must have been smoking crack).
The third or fourth clock may be Iraq time or eastern time depending on
the tendencies and desires of the occupants.

When in clinic, I pay attention to only three times: (1) 0700 when I
report to the clinic for duty; (2) 1200 when the lunch hour starts; and
(3) 1700 when the clinic closes. There are very few other times of
significance; when I get hungry, I eat, and when I get tired, I sleep.
It's just that simple.

Obviously the ICU is a bit different. I really only care about 2 times: (1) 0630 when bedside rounds begin, and (2) the time when my replacement is supposed to arrive. Other than that, I go to nut med (nutritional medicine) when I'm hungry, I sleep on the call room sofas when I'm tired, I watch movies or check email in the "doc box" when I need to. It's also very simple.

Since every day is (basically) like the next, it's sometimes hard to
keep track of the day of the week or the week of the month. If I didn't
have to write the date on the patient sick slips or my ICU orders, I would probably never know the date! Without looking at a calendar, though, there are several
ways to monitor the passage of time and keep track of how long I've been
here (and, more importantly, how much longer I will be here). For
example:

- Surf 'n' Turf dinner is every Friday at the DFAC; I know I've been
here three weeks since I've had crab and lobster three times. (NOT A JOKE! We really do have steak, crab, lobster, fried shrimp, crab cakes, gumbo, and lobster bisque every Friday. We even trek all the way across the base to the "Aviation DFAC" since they have the best Surf 'n' Turf around!)

- Mondays are the day for "malaria" and for "mask". Everyone in
Afghanistan should take malaria pills, and some people take them weekly.
It's easy to figure out how many weeks left on deployment by counting
remaining pills, or qualitatively by seeing the bottle become more and more empty. We also have to check our gas mask and its accoutrements every Monday and record the preventative maintenance
undertaken. You know you've been here a long time when the preventative
maintenance flowsheet is full.

- Similarly, I have a $0.99 Wal-Mart standard medication holder which holds 28 days of medication. Every time I fill it, I know another month has passed. I just re-filled it for the first time yesterday, which means that today is day 30 of deployment.

- My roommmates and I have barracks maintenance (affectionately termed
"Cinderella duty") every 9 days; when I see the magnetic sign on my door
in the morning, I know another 9 days have passed.

- For me, Thursdays are a special day since I get to skype with Matthew.
My mom and dad care for him on Thursdays, and when he's at their house,
we try to talk, sing, play itsy-bitsy spider and pat-a-cake, and
generally spend some time together. I look forward to Thursdays for
that reason, so every time a Thursday rolls around and I talk with Matt,
I know another week has passed. (By the way, Charles and Shannon are
helping to get skype set up in Glendora so that Matt and I can talk more
often. Now if we could just get James to skype ....)

So here's to Father Time, whether he lives in London, Baghdad, Bagram, or Glendora. :-) Wherever he is, I hope that he continues to make time fly!