First it was butchery at Mozza’s Scoula di Pizza. Then we followed up with six courses of pork revelry at their mouthwatering Mangiare in Famiglia. Luckily for food fans everywhere, the best things do indeed come in threes. Chad Colby, I’ll follow you anywhere:

The task? 5 local chefs, each given their own 175 pound Berkshire pig. Prepared from tip to tail and paired with wines from 5 California vintners, they battle for the title of Prince (or Princess) or Pork. For a mere $125 (or $175 for VIP access), you could help tip the scales in Master Chad’s favor.

I’ll see you at the VIP table.

Cochon 555

My love has been tested. Los Angeles, meet your match: New fuckin’ Zealand.

En Route to Rob Roy Glacier, Wanaka

I’ve returned to the cold, cruel arms of my homeland and post-partum vacation depression doesn’t begin to describe the emptiness that echoes through my heart.  Three weeks in Aotearoa has left me forever changed, and now, in the dry desert of Los Angeles, my addiction to adventure has a new and unquenchable thirst.

And with beauty like this, how can you blame me?

Rakaia Gorge

Routeburn Track

Views of Mt. Cook near Lake Tekapo

Crater Lakes, Tongariro Crossing

Milford Sound, Fjordland National Park

Oh, and I jumped out of a plane. No big deal.

Friends, this trip has changed me for the better. It’ll change the blog for better. 2011’s gonna fill your web browser with some truly tempting trips, so I hope you’ll forgive me for my brief leave of absence and stay tuned for more.

New Zealand calls. See you in 3 weeks!

In four days and 10 hours, I’ll be en route to New Zealand.

Please excuse the past month+ of unblogginess…my thoughts have been entirely elsewhere. I promise a full return to LA-local awesome upon my return in three weeks.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day: Lucha VaVoom! Ditch the truffles and candlelight dinners - spice up the season of love with some masked Mexican wrestling, sexy burlesque and all around sauciness. Tonight’s performance at the Mayan will be my first foray into sexo y violencia, so I made sure to secure ringside seats. WIN

Lucha VaVoom

Ticket’s for tonight’s event have long sold out, but there’s a standy-by line for the determined. With Darren Aronofsky giving an in-person Q&A, it’sworth spending some time lined up in a queue.

Tonight @ 7:30pm

Aero Theatre

I must bid adieu to 2010 and the passing of my year, the Year of the Tiger. Clever and kind Rabbit holds our luck in his paws. Start off the Chinese Lunar New Year right with some festivities just east of Downtown.

Food, drink, festivities and cultural displays will be going down the entire weekend, and if you don’t mind fighting some crowds a good time is guaranteed. Public transportation aint so bad thanks to the Metro Gold Line, so I advise ditching your car and hoofing it as much as possible.

A full rundown of activities on Chinatown LA’s website

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When it comes to weekday routines and adventures around the city, I’m a staunch westside homebody. I scoff when someone mentions a drive to Downtown and snarl at the thought of a Friday night in Hollywood. Yet when the weekend comes and traffic subsides ever so slightly, my perspective does a 180 and my bones ache to get the hell out of my comfort zone. As I continue to hike my ass off in preparation for New Zealand, on Saturday I found myself rolling down Pearblossom Highway on the road to Devil’s Punchbowl Park.

With good company and a pleasant soundtrack, the 90-minute drive zipped by and we landed in the surreal suburbia of Palmdale. Further up a windy road we passed a sea of Joshua Trees, finally driving closer to the snowy base of Angeles National Forest.

The parking lot was nearly full but the whole place was a beautiful kind of quiet empty. We started with a 1 mile loop track to the bottom of the Devil’s Punchbowl, a small eruption of geological awesome, with jagged sandstone formations uniquely pancaked after a millennia of converging fault lines.

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23 days…552 hours…33,120 minutes. In little more than 3 weeks, I’ll be on my way to the land of the long white cloud: New Zealand. With such a serious trip on my hands, I’ve been kicking my life into high gear, shaping up for 20 days of adventure on the other side of the world.

On the scarier side of things, I’ve joined a gym for the first time in my life. Even worse, I’m kind of addicted. But when the weekend comes calling with warm days and cloudless skies, there’s only one place you’ll find me breaking a sweat…and that’s on a hike.

The easy breezy trails of Malibu that I once enjoyed so much just don’t cut it anymore. I need mileage. So we set our sights on Sycamore Canyon, an 11-mile loop in the mountains and grassland between Thousand Oaks and Malibu.

This spot offers a little bit of everything, with some people geared up for the long haul, and others choosing a shorter walk to a very rewarding waterfall.

Wildlife was everywhere here, though we had the unfortunate luck of spotting the remains of a chicken, headless and very out of it’s native environs.

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