A tourist used Tinder to find a knight in shining armour to come to her rescue after she got trapped on an icy mountain road.
Professional kite surfer Lonia Haeger was travelling through Norway on a road trip with two friends earlier this week when freezing rain started to fall, causing the road they were driving on to become impassable.
The group were forced to stop their van on a curve in the road, next to an edge which led to ‘ocean and big rocks’.
Lonia and her friends were terrified the freezing road would cause their vehicle to slide down the mountain, or that another car would come around the bend and hit them, but with no way of moving they had no choice but to sit and wait.
Recalling the experience on Instagram, the surfer wrote:
Just after 30 minutes driving down of the North Cape, it started raining…the street iced up that we even couldn’t stay on one point!
We stopped in front of a mountain… next to the street [was] just ocean and big rocks and we stoped [sic] exactly behind a curve.
The moment you realise your [sic] are helpless against Mother Nature.
As they couldn’t move the car themselves, the group decided to try and find someone who could help. But with no nearby friends or family to call, and the nearest mechanic more than 200km away, they had to turn to Tinder.
The three friends set up an account for Lonia, and used a cute picture of her and her dog in the hopes of finding a someone who could help.
The picture clearly did the trick, and within five minutes she had a match with a bearded local named Stian Lauluten. A screenshot of the pair’s conversation shows Lonia explaining she was stuck, and the heroic local quick to offer his help.
Incredibly, Stian just so happened to be a construction worker who had access to a bulldozer, so within a few minutes of chatting to Lonia he came trundling up the mountain to the rescue.
On Instagram, the surfer continued:
Five minutes later he came up with his bulldozer and shaped lines in the ice.
We followed him to the next parking slot and the day after our hero organized tires with spikes!
Thanks to Stian’s heroic actions, Lonia and her friends were able to carry on their travels. Ironically, the three were road testing the vehicle for a company that manufactures them at the time they got stuck.
It might not have been the date Stian was expecting to find through the app, but the rescue mission would have definitely made for a memorable Tinder experience!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.