The morning of February 15th is perhaps the saddest morning of the year. February 14th—Valentine’s Day—at least has potential. You can wake up on Valentine’s Day and pretend your life is some cheesy rom-com and that you’re about to finally find "the one."
Spoiler: you don’t.
Instead, you go through life as you normally would, only more desperate. You swipe on Tinder with fevered intensity instead of lazy curiosity. Maybe you go to the same bar you usually haunt, but tonight it’s dressed up with pink lights, little hearts, and Cupid’s arrows hanging from barely working fixtures. Maybe you send a few regrettable late-night texts. Maybe nothing works out the way you planned; the plot isn’t what you thought it would be. You go home, and go to sleep. In the morning, you wake up. It’s February 15th.

It was February 15th, and everything hurt: brain, stomach, ego. The clock on my desk read 9:30, and I tried to remember what time I’d gone to bed. It didn’t matter; it all fell into the category of too late. I rolled over and buried myself in my comforter. My heart was beating fast from the hangxiety—that anxious feeling you get the morning after a night out. It’s the feeling that you've done everything wrong in your life. But there are ebbs and flows. Self-loathing leads to retribution. Why do I remember Flagstaff?

From my bed, I could hear the steady tap-tap-tap of cold rain falling. Everything was gray, and my mind drifted back to Arizona. I’d been to Flagstaff a year earlier on an unofficial Dinosaurs Will Die trip. It was productive, low-stress, and warm—as close to a tropical vacation as a jibber could ask for. Meyer had hit me up a few days before Valentine’s Day to ask about spots. Was Videograss still there, I thought. And if not, was the snow? I needed to leave Salt Lake behind, even if it was just for a few days. I needed to get out, wanted to be forgotten.

I texted Meyer and relayed his information to Dylan. The weather in Arizona read fifty degrees for the rest of the week, but the webcams showed snow. We got on the phone and patched in Goop.

“Hello,” Goop said, clearly still waking up, his voice heavy with sleep.
“Want to go to Flagstaff?” I asked.
“When?”
“I can be ready in fifteen.”
“I’m going to need a bit more time than that,” Goop said. “But yeah, I’m down.”

We were five deep in Goop’s truck—me, Dylan Okurowski, Luke Lund, Caleb Kinnear, and Ben Marmer—all of us a little worse for wear. The drive began to smooth out, though; Burger King and Willie Nelson helped. We were headed south, down to Arizona.

Bob Plumb called Cable. I didn’t hear what Bob said, but I watched Cable as he talked, giving a never-ending series of uh-huhs and oks. When he got off the phone, we asked what the call was about.
“Bob said he might come,” was all the information we got. We figured we might as well hold off on booking an Airbnb on the off chance Bob could put something on his company card.

Bob called me a bit later and asked if we’d gotten a place yet.
“No,” I said. “We were waiting to see if you wanted to come…so, uh, we could figure out space…and stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bob said, “you mean you wanted daddy’s credit card.”

Something like that.

The final stretch of the drive was painful. My hangxiety had been replaced by regular anxiety. We’d just driven seven and a half hours, with thirty minutes left, and still, no snow. None. What had I done? I’d dragged my friends eight hours from home. And for what? I tried to stay calm, reminding myself it was like this last year. The snow only arrives when you get there. It’s like magic. The webcams looked fine.

Flagstaff itself is an aberration, a blip. The mention of jibbing in Arizona probably conjures up thoughts of turquoise-colored stair sets and pueblo-inspired dfds. There’s a bit of that, sure. But for the most part, Flagstaff looks more like Truckee than Phoenix. The air smells of pine, and there’s this mountainous dirtbag vibe that probably came in the ‘60s and never left. The snow hadn’t left either. There were piles of it. The sun was warm, and the air felt nice, but still, the snow stayed. It didn’t make sense, and we didn’t ask questions. We were just grateful.

Wake up, breakfast, scope—you know the drill. Trips all seem to follow the same sort of pattern. Jib trips are like airport paperbacks or daytime soap operas; the plot never changes, just the characters.

I’m trying not to repeat myself here. I’ve done this all before. Garage issue two featured a Flagstaff jib article written by yours truly. I don’t want to be in reruns already. I only bring up that article because we were in the same boat two years in a row. To quote myself, “Flagstaff, I quickly learned, is mostly churches and schools.”

Videograss had gone, seen, and left. They went midweek. You can’t hit spots in Flagstaff midweek. It just doesn’t work.

By the end of the first day, we had driven damn near every inch of the city. It was a Friday, and we had ideas. We knew what we wanted to hit. There was still light left, though. Bob was still a few hours out. We had time.

There’s a small kink rail at Northern Arizona University. It’s in a field. I normally wouldn’t tell you this—jib secrecy and all that—but I am. Why am I telling you this? Because fuck that rail.

Oh, it’ll be fun, we thought. We could just play on it.

I hopped on boardslide and fell off right after the kink. Goop hopped on boardslide after me; he got evil locked. He couldn’t bail. He was being pulled down, further and further, slowly dragged away from safety. Then he hit the end of the rail. Shoulder to metal. He didn’t move. We stood at the top of the set, waiting for him to stand up. He looked back, laughed a bit, said, “Ow.” He got up and started walking around, his concern growing with each step. He was talking out loud to nobody in particular, just pacing and hitting the generic, all-inclusive, “Fuck.” Because of adrenaline, injuries in the streets often exist the way Hemingway described bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly. Goop looked at us.
“I need to go to the hospital.”

“Dr. Arcteryx please report to X-Ray.”

That brought me out of it. I looked around the waiting room. Was I the only one who heard that? I wanted to ask someone about it, but I couldn’t. I was alone.

The woman at the front desk had told Goop the wait was five hours. We walked out to the car to relay the information. It was decided Dyl, Cable, and Benny should just check into the BnB, and I would wait at the hospital. Goop tossed a few beers into my tote bag. Then we went back inside.

“I guess it’s just muscle shit,” Goop said. We were standing outside the hospital, and he was smoking a celebratory spliff. Nothing was broken or out of place; it was just a hard hit on some steel. The truck pulled up, and we got in. Turns out they hadn’t gone to the BnB after dropping us off. It seems they found a weekday spot in Flagstaff. Benny got a clip...