I hate winter. HATE HATE HATE. I ride to work in the dark, I ride home in the dark, and I just generally feel like a mole person because even when it's daylight, it's generally gray and dark daylight, not sunny cold daylight. So it's fair to say that winter is my least favorite season.

In a lovely bit of serendipity, though, my wife was born and raised in Tucson, and still has family (and a few friends) there, and completely coincidental to that, my sister and her family also live in Tucson. So the way I deal with winter is by leaving it for a while - we just booked a week in Tucson at the end of the month, and I can't wait. We're going for a family visit, to watch a couple Timbers preseason games, and to get me some sun (my wife detests the sun, which is why she moved to Portland, so for her warm weather isn't an incentive).

The prospect of travel gives me something to look forward to, a reason to slog through these awful depressing short dark damp days, because I know that three weeks from now, I'll be sitting in my sister's backyard in shorts and no shoes, barbecuing something and drinking a beer.

How do you cope with your least favorite season, whichever one that is?

Apropos of nothing, here are five of my favorite albums from 2012:

• Japandroids - Celebration Rock
• Best Coast - The Only Place
• Torche - Harmonicraft
• JD McPherson - Signs & Signifiers
• Kelly Hogan - I Like To Keep Myself In Pain