I was going to take a picture of myself for the blog this afternoon, but the camera battery died at the crucial moment. It was probably the best missed photo opportunity of the trip so far. So let me paint a picture not in pixels, but in paragraphs of perfectly punctuated prose.

Imagine Phil Goddard standing just outside a little town in Texas. He's a colourful sight: coated in frost from head to foot, and with a bright yellow scarf and a bright red nose, he could easily be mistaken for a lanky middle-aged snowman. His vision is obscured by the quarter-inch layer of ice on his glasses which reforms as fast as he can scrape it off, and his clothes have frozen solid so that he crackles as he walks.

Phil has just experienced his first ice storm. His teeth chatter as he stands beside the green roadsign with white lettering, but he has a grin on his face. The sign, with its tasseled fringe of inch-long icicles, reads: "Cool, Texas. Pop. 280".