I spent the past week snowboarding on the Stubai glacier, in the beautiful Tirol region of the fine country of Austria. I have been there several times over the last couple of years, always having a lot of fun riding the slopes and enjoying the spectacular views. If you’re looking for quality skiing/snowboarding time in the Alps, try the Stubai glacier, you won’t be disappointed.
A photo from one of the previous trips
I have one private problem with these trips, however — I seem to have a bad tendency towards getting sick during the stay. I often have to take one or two (or three) days off riding and stay inside until I feel good enough to get on the board again. This time was one of those unfortunate ones, and out of the planned five days of snowboarding, I had to spend two getting back to health.
Surprisingly, staying inside the whole day works as a productivity booster for me. I think it’s my inner urge to still get something out of the seemingly ruined day. Alright, I’m here in the Alps and should be snowboarding like there’s no tomorrow, but if I can’t do that, so be it — at least I’ll do something useful.
So, over the two days of sickness last week, I accomplished quite a few things that sat in my backlog for some time — for example, I finally set up a JavaScript development environment on my netbook, and then used it to build a Greasemonkey script, based on an idea that I had a while back (I’ll probably release it in the next few days). I also had a chance to at last start reading the book that I got as a Christmas present — “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall.
Sadly, these sickness-induced productivity bursts only happen on those snowboarding trips. When I’m sick at home I’m as unproductive as one would normally expect.