In other words, please do as I say, not as I do. Saturday morning I was in too much of a hurry on one of our local town roads on my way to pick up a yard sign before I went to the office. The road had a slight snow covering -- and some ice, apparently -- and has a lot of curves, as roads tend to have in lake country. As I went around a sweeping right-hander, all four wheels broke loose simultaneously and the laws of physics took over -- the car continued in its direction of travel, but, alas, the roadway didn’t go in that direction.
The A4 has AWD and I was able to drive up the bank and out again once I had slowed enough to regain control. My pride was damaged more than the car, but I can’t depend on being that lucky next time; ditches like this one have a lot of debris and obstructions in them, and the A4 has so little ground clearance that you can't roll a softball under the front of it. I have been driving on northern Wisconsin roads for 38 years and should know better, but I still apparently need to relearn the lesson from time-to-time -- slow down on winter roads.