Allison Peryea
Ed. note: Please welcome new columnist Allison Peryea. In each “Test Case” column, she’ll play “human guinea pig” and describe her attempt to try out things that attorneys are advised or expected to do — or not to do. In case you missed it, you can read her first column here.
Lawyers don’t take vacations so much as earn them. We must survive a gauntlet of dormant cases and projects that spring to life as soon as a getaway is calendared. The pre-vacation storm before the calm—including finding people to cover meetings and hearings, and ordering stuff online for the trip that is typically delivered the day after departure—results in a feeling of not so much simply taking a few days off, but rather fleeing a burning building.
Because vacation time is so hard-won, I try to maximize the general awesomeness of every personal day I take. I treat vacationing like a temporary new job, analyzing Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews for every pit stop and setting alarms during afternoon naps to ensure we don’t miss a single sunset. This doesn’t always sit well with my traveling companions, who mistake my go-getter attitude for bossy inflexibility.
With that in mind, I approached my recent family trip to Maui as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. After booking the vacation rental, arranging for someone to watch Kitty, and providing clear-cut instructions to my sister about renting a car (hey, I had a coupon code), I would sit back and let everyone else make the decisions. I would set my theoretical watch to “island time.”
Eight of us were packed into two condos in Kihei, a sleepy town bordered by a string of beaches and blanketed in shave-ice shacks. I intentionally hadn’t researched activities ahead of time, but as soon as people started suggesting things, I had to hold my tongue. Like an American voter, I already had opinions about matters I knew nothing about.
Our first day of vacation, I permitted people to convene at the pool, despite my typically strict adherence to a “beach trumps pool” philosophy. I let other people do the grocery shopping, after compiling a short, 27-item list. I even allowed my boyfriend pick out the yogurt flavors. I was on the right track.
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The struggle emerged on Day Two, when we went to a town called Lahaina… without a predetermined plan of action. We skipped the famous beach nearby because people were concerned about finding parking. My parents were not impressed by my mastermind plan to take an Uber. The snorkeling sucked at the beach where we ended up. I kept my “I told you so’s” to myself, though I wanted so badly to share them with others.
On Day Three we drove for hours on the Hana Highway, which is famously twisty and peppered with roadside waterfalls. I tried valiantly without success to control the vehicle temperature and speed from the backseat. To avoid driving in the dark, we turned around before visiting the “Seven Sacred Pools,” which frustrated me because I don’t like to skip anything appearing on a checklist. I was mollified, however, by a dry loaf of banana bread from a dingy mini-mart.
The next day we visited a beach known informally as “Turtle Town,” which was recommended by a client and is populated by sunburned people and sea turtles. Embracing my new laid-back attitude, I didn’t drag my sleeping-in boyfriend along, and he managed to take an Uber and find us. My inner control freak was enlightened by the fact that things could work out even when I didn’t orchestrate every step.
On Day Five, the guys went golfing, which I wanted to protest based on my penchant for objecting to things that aren’t my idea. The next day, we rented surf boards at a beach I deemed insufficiently beautiful. But I courageously held strong. Though everyone was tired that night, I rallied people to have a late-night dinner at a Tiki bar that offered a tropical drink called a “Zombie” known for being ridiculously intoxicating. They were gross. We ordered two and drank both.
On our last full day of vacation, we got up at six for a kayaking-snorkeling trip. Though the tour was my idea, the night spent waiting for the alarm to go off made me rethink booking. We were also cold, and our guide was a military veteran named Steve who had the customer-service skills of an angry bear. The back of my kayak seat also housed some sort of horrifying cocoon thing that exploded with dead, green worms while I was paddling. I was chagrined that the tour was not as great as hoped, and as penance did not freak out when everyone wanted to eat burritos in the rental car rather than on the beach. (Okay, I made a statement just to get something on the record—we were in the beach parking lot.)
After the beach, people wanted to go back to the condo to relax. I found this to be unacceptable, since this was our last day and I would prefer that everyone be doing outside things while tired and miserable. I was outnumbered and sulked at the pool while reading. At that point, my dictatorial reflexes were weakened by two distracting factors: (1) sunblock re-application required constant attention to avoid the baking Hawaiian sun, even though I religiously wore what my friends call my “old lady hat,” and (2) a week of salt water had transformed my hair into a tangled mass resembling a bird’s nest. I still vehemently resisted the viewing of a horror movie, claiming that “we” didn’t want to watch it. (It was at that point that I realized I refer to myself as “we” in order to try to add more weight to my opinion. This was a sad moment of self-reflection.)
The Verdict: This was a sort of failed mission, especially since I was trying to be flexible in a famously laid-back vacation spot. It was successful in that I was more conscious about my “assertiveness,” but I wasn’t always able to keep it in check. I blame being a lawyer: we are used to being asked for advice, and sometimes we don’t realize that people might not want it all the time, even if we have the best ideas and are never wrong.
My recommendation for lawyers who take their vacation time seriously like I do: put just few activities on the to-do list—for me, these were kayaking, snorkeling with turtles, and paddle-boarding—and then settle the heck down about everything else. Show people that we can go with the flow, but don’t hesitate to fight the current a little bit.
Earlier: Test Case: Can I Survive A Week Without Surfing The Internet?
Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at [email protected].