and control a vehicle like I want to.

Long story short, my HCBW thought it'd be a great idea to drive DOWN a long dirt driveway to her friends house when there was 7 inches of new snow on the ground. And my HCBW drives an Odyssey...... So after I get home late from work, with an approaching storm coming, we head over to get the van out. I've never been to this house before, but even in the dark I can tell right away it'll take a miracle to get the van out.

I make several runs at the hill but can't make it more than 30 feet (the whole driveway is 1.2 miles - and it's either flat or up hill). This is seriously complicated by the fact that I can't turn off my traction control. On an Odyssey (I just learned this yesterday), you can't turn traction control off if you have a low tire pressure indicator on. We had sunny/60 degree weather on Monday then 30 degrees and 7 inches of snow yesterday so one of my tires must have dropped half a PSI and my uber-sensitive Odyssey TPMS light came on. Great....

So I had two electronic systems working against me. Had I been able to over-ride these or not have them at all I'd have had a chance at getting out, but without the ability to shut off traction control there was no way. This kind of stuff bugs me, I don't even like ABS most times. I like stick-shifts, no ABS, and the ability to drive the vehicle how I know how.

Luckily the husband of my wife's friend was super nice and rightly prepared, he had to pull us the full length of the driveway up to the blacktop with his tractor.

When we finally got home I asked my HCBW, "Did you notice how they only have 4WD vehicles, and also a tractor with a huge snowblower on it....?"