[zjrog]

DPV, you made some good points. I know most of you don't live in the sticks either. Living where the roads are taken care of in inclement weather makes 4x4 irrelavent.

I'm glad I have 4x4. In fact I am lucky that I can chose between fulltime and parttime 4x4. This winter has been a good one, 4x4 came in handy plenty of times since I do drive a mountain pass to work. We even had a day when the Highway Patrol in their 4x4s were stuck closing the road. That morning with over 2 feet of fresh new snow, I couldn't budge the Neon with the snow over the headlights. My Jeep motored right on through even pushing snow around. Later in the morning, I did get a little stuck, but I was playing in the snow. In the pass, over the winter, FWD and RWD cars are often in the ditches. A few SUVs with AWD, but very very few true 4x4 vehicles. I have pulled out some of each, but just one 4x4 where the driver didn't know what he was doing. Honestly, having been through a couple performance driving schools, I feel I have a decent understanding of vehicle dynamics. The average driver does not, nor do they care. A large number of drivers don't even THINK effectively while driving.

This is only my second winter in almost 30 years, living in New Mexico, Florida, Southern California, and Hawaii we didn't have much winter. Though I did drive a FWD across country one wintery storm with freezing rain. Most of the vehicles that were in the ditches were cars that went past me too fast. But since that was 94 when I did that, the SUV craze wasn't in full swing yet.

And yes, my friends and I have gone on trails in the snow. One trail is easy in 2WD when things are dry. We took turns pulling each other out though in the snow.