Boomeranging

One thing I hope to avoid tomorrow is the dreaded boomerang.

It's about a 5 hour flight from Christchurch to McMurdo on the coast of Antarctica. Because the weather can always change in Antarctica, it's possible for us to leave Christchurch and have a bad storm blow in before we arrive. There's a point in each flight where the pilots decide whether they need to turn back. If they do that, it's called a boomerang flight.

I've never had that happen, though one of the other IceCube people I'll be flying with tomorrow was on a flight which boomeranged, and then the next three flights were cancelled, so he didn't get to McMurdo until 5 days after he was scheduled to arrive there. I'm hoping I'll never experience a boomerang flight, though I have had one cancelled flight ... a horrible hardship when you're forced to spend another summer day roaming around Christchurch rather than pulling on all your winter gear and going to work at the South Pole!