Why I Read at 5am (and Why the Balcony Beats the Beach Chair)

August 20, 2026

Here’s a confession: on vacation, my favorite hour happens before anyone else is awake.

It’s 5am. Dee’s asleep. Cole and Luke crawled into our bed sometime in the night — the way they always do on a trip — and somehow two small boys can shrink a big bed down to a cot, mostly by sleeping sideways with their feet in my back. So I’m up. The coffee’s on. And for about one hour, nobody needs anything from me. Just me, a hot cup, and a book. That’s the whole trick.

I didn’t plan to become a 5am guy. I build houses back in Regina, and job sites start early. Twenty years of alarm clocks trained me. So when the prairie winter finally lets me escape somewhere warm, my body still wakes up in the dark — but instead of pulling on work boots, I pour a coffee and read. Best habit I ever backed into.

Now, the part people argue with me about: the balcony beats the beach chair. It’s not even close.

I know the beach chair sounds like the dream. Toes in the sand, book in hand, waves up ahead. But try it. The sun turns your page into a mirror, so you’re squinting the whole time. Sand gets into the spine of the book and the crack of everything else. The wind flips your pages to a chapter you haven’t read yet. Your sunscreen fingers leave little greasy thumbprints on every corner. And every few minutes, someone walks by, or a kid nails a cannonball, or you realize you’re slowly cooking like a rotisserie chicken. It’s a lot of work for “relaxing.”

The balcony fixes all of it. You get shade, so the page isn’t blinding. You get a rail to park your coffee on. You still hear the water — that steady wash of waves is the best reading soundtrack there is — but there’s no sand, no glare, and no crowd. Just you and the story. On our last trip, the rental had a little balcony that looked out over the water, and I swear I got more reading done in that quiet hour than the whole rest of the day combined.

Here’s the honest bit, because I don’t think there’s one right way to do this: if you’re a night owl, don’t force yourself out of bed at 5. Flip it. Read late, after the little ones crash, when the place goes quiet again. The magic isn’t the clock — it’s finding the one pocket of the day when nobody’s asking you for a thing. Morning’s just when I find mine.

So that’s my pitch. Wake up before the world does, or stay up after it goes to sleep. Grab the coffee. Skip the beach chair, find a rail and a bit of shade. Then disappear into a good book for an hour that’s only yours.

My boys think getting up at 5am on a holiday means their dad has finally lost it. Maybe. But I come back to the room more rested than any afternoon by the pool has ever left me, with a finished paperback to show for where the hour went. Whenever your quiet pocket lands — dawn or midnight — that’s the one I’d guard.