We were driving on gravel for a couple of hours yesterday, and just after we got back onto the main road, the Ring Road, we had a flat so we had to pull over. We got all the luggage out of the jeep and got the jack, but some of the pieces weren’t there so we couldn’t get the spare to drop from the bottom, and it turned out to be flat anyway. It was windy, cold, and it turned to snow before we were finished. But to make a long story short, a local carpenter stopped and he had tools that would work as substitutes. He took the spare to a gas station about a mile away and brought it back thinking it would hold air long enough to get us to a local farmer/mechanic who fixed tires in a nearby town. He asked me why we were here in Iceland, and I said my mom was Icelandic-Canadian and my family are Jonassons and Bjarnasons and Gudmunsons. He said, “I am Bjarnason, that’s my last name.”

According to Amaya and Ellie, he was also cute:

Postscript: The farmer/mechanic told us that he went with a choir to Manitoba and Mountain in 2010, and that it was his “best travels ever.” Best flat tire experience ever.