Programmer’s winter fantasy

I love skiing. It’s my favorite activity during winter. For years I fantasized about turning skiing from a holiday activity into a morning routine. I was wondering if I could combine skiing with programming to get a dream-like winter life. Continuning the trend from 2015 of me trying out fantasizes in reality, I decided to give this idea a solid try.

I’ve been skiing on and off for 5 weeks now. I had to take a few breaks when job interviews demanded my full attention. Still, I topped 630km of downhill skiing and did some good programming. I feel I’ve gathered enough data points to draw some conclusions about my experience.

The experience

I love all mountains but Alps feel particularly magical to me. I start my morning with a view from my hotel room:

and when I climb to the top of a nearby peak, I see:

It’s hard to not get all pumped up when your morning looks like that. Nearly perfect skiing conditions and breathtaking landscapes are very addictive. I’m so often tempted to extend skiing to the whole day. However, letting myself loose is in a direct conflict with my goal of doing programming. Giving way to the temptation has twofold effect: 1. I have less hours left in the afternoon for coding 2. if I go over 3 hours of an intensive skiing I become so physically exhausted that I can’t focus on looking at the computer screen anymore. To resist the temptation I had to force my mind to switch from a holiday mode into a life routine mode. I settled on 3 hours of skiing in the morning, followed by a lunch on a slope and skiing downhill back to my hotel. This way I treat skiing as a long morning exercise and start working around 1pm with enough of the time left in the day to get something substantial done. I’m glad I picked a smaller ski resort with shorter slopes and less crowds so 2–3 hours of skiing is both feasible and fun.

To my surprise, I’ve experienced another source of pressure that would steer me away from realizing my dream-like life. I found myself the only person around in a mood to work in the afternoon surrounded by a large number of people on holidays with a very different expectation for their days. I like hanging out with other skiers on slopes and I don’t like eating lunch or dinner alone so I’d naturally gravitate towards other people. However, I struggled to find a balance between having a company when I’m not working and resisting the temptation of switching back to the holiday mode. I felt like Sisyphus, rolling my programer’s determination boulder up a hill for a few days explaining awkwardly why I’m leaving slopes so early and not joining for drinks tonight. Finally, I’d enjoy a day or two without a pressure until the next batch of skiers came for a week-long holidays and I’d start all over again. What I ended up doing is giving people hints that I’m not on vacation when I meet them for the first time. They would get curious and ask what am I doing here. I’d explain I’m running an experiment of finding a dream-like way of spending a winter. I’d still get invited for shots of grappa but this time I learnt to speak to my fellow skier’s sense of empathy for my internal struggle and say “no”. They would respect my decision and laugh at my challenging dilemma of chosing between pleasures and working. I found it’s important to have a good, succinct story that other people could identify with. Expectedly, a lot of people share my fantasy of skiing for weeks in beautiful mountains but never had a chance to try it themselves or meet somebody who did it; they found it fun to talk to somebody running such an experiment.

With temptations tamed I found myself very satisfied with my routine. I work less hours per day than I would be sitting at an apartment or an office and my time programming is spent more productively. My mind is very fresh every day, I’m energized to work on my projects and good ideas flow to me very naturally.

Planning and practicalities

I’ve decided to not spend too much time on planning ahead my trip. I booked a hotel for a week in the small village in the Dolomites I already knew. I left myself the flexibility of picking my place of stay last minute. When an opportunity arose to visit my friends in Switzerland, I simply dragged my suitcase into a train and a few hours later I was surrounded by shops discretely selling the most expensive watches in the world. I split my stay between the Italian and the Swiss part of the Alps depending on the snow conditions.

I’m skiing during the winter holidays season which drives prices of the accommodation at ski resorts really high. However, by not being tied by fixed plans you place yourself into a market segment that is lightly populated. I realized that I could get below offseason rates at a hotel I particularly liked by proposing I’d take over a last-minute cancelled reservation. Anna, the lady running this family-owned and Michelin-recommended hotel, found my offer questionable. We chatted a bit more and, with a big smile, I explained her that I’m running this experiment of finding the dream-like way of spending my winter. I explained her that for the experiment to work I have to establish skiing+working as the new norm; I needed to find a way to drive the cost a bit down. My story got a boosted by mentioning that, despite being a techie, I discovered her place not by browsing the TripAdvisor but by strolling around her village and chatting with locals. She appreciated my spirit and my way going about life. I think my narrative brought me to the place you always want to occupy when you’re on a buying side of a good with a short supply: in the market segment of one. After a few days, Anna offered me a room to stay due to a cancalled reservation at price that was much below the market prices.

Getting to and from a remote mountain village without a car can be a pain. Nevertheless, I find it to be a much bigger pain to let myself fret over the details of planning ahead. The minimal planning I’ve done was to find a ride from Venice Airport to the village. From there on, I had no idea how long and staying and how I’m going to move around. When I decided to go to Switzerland, I had to find a way to get myself to a train station that was one hour of drive away. Unexpectely, I found a ride with a great couple that was going all the way to Milan (3 hours drive). They found my way of living amusing and when they heard I’m looking for a good way to get myself to Switzerland they proposed to share a car ride and dropped me off right in front of the train station.

When I was looking for a way to get back to the Venice airport from my hotel, I asked the staff for help. They looked for various options but found no shuttle service I could use. I was leaving on Tuesday and all services operate on weekends to bring people for a typical week-long holidays. When it looked like I have no other alternative than to skip last day of skiing and leave a day early to catch my plane next noon, Anna proposed that her husband will give me a lift to a bus stop from where I can go directly to the airport, also during the week. She told me it’s over an hour drive on way. I was pleased by the offer but worried that this service is going to be pricey. I shared my concern with her, and she smiled and said that on Tuesday they’re not that busy and they can give me a special service; they would drive me for free. She went on to say it was fun to have me at her hotel pursuing an amusing idea of skiing and working permanently. I was blown away by the offer and with a great deal of gratitude I took it. And obviously, it’s not about the money and time I saved but the story I took with me which I love spreading. If you would like to visit a beautiful region of the Italian Dolomites either in Winter or Summer (both top notch choices) and experience great Italian cuisine, checkout the hospitable Hotel Belvedere. If you end up going there, say hi from me; you can refer to me as Polish guy wearing a black hat. They will definitely know who you’re talking about!

Lastly, a quick word about the Internet access. The common wisdom of not relying on hotel wifi still applies. When tens of people come back from skiing and are in a rush to blast the social media with pictures and videos of their favorite moments from slopes, the wifi cringes. It doesn’t help that Italy has rather poor Internet infrastructure anywhere you go far from big cities and in mountains their national operator TIM has a monopoly. TIM charges all hotels ridiculous amount of money for a poor service. However, the very same company provides a decent LTE coverage even in mountains. TIM also had a special offer for foreigners that allowed me to buy a prepaid simcard for 10 Euro with 30GB of data on it. I got 3 simcards on the spot and I found 90GB to be enough for my needs. My advice is to buy a good LTE modem before you travel to save time and money and rely on local mobile providers for the Internet access.

Thumbs up

If you share a similar fantasy of turning holiday’s compusure into a daily routine, my short advice would be: do it and don’t over-plan it. It’s an awesome way of spending winter and boosting your programming productivity. Skiing for weeks is never cheap but Italian Alps are a competitive pick in Europe. If you let yourself to be really flexible you can escape the market forces that drive prices high during winter holidays.

If you enjoy speaking with people, don’t be shy to share your story. You’ll find a way to appeal to people’s nostalgia and empathy and bring some inevitable laughter to people around you. Everyone carries a free spirit inside but not everybody has the courage to let it be their guide. By being a living example, you can give other people inspiration and a reason to pause. You might find it to be the most satisfying part of realizing your winter fantasy.