Rachel Veicht, a 93-year-old grandmother from Florida, has parked her car for good after driving 576,000 miles (927,000 km) over 48 years at the wheel of one trusty vehicle.
Rachel Veitch bought her Mercury Comet Caliente for $3,289 in February 1964. It has outlasted three marriages and 18 battery changes, she says.
On March 9, Rachel Veicht had to give up driving as she has become legally blind.
Reicht Veitch plans to sell the car instead of giving it to her family amid concerns they might not look after it.
“They’re not going to get it. They couldn’t take care of it like I did,” Rachel Veitch told Fox News. Rachel Veicht has four children, nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
She said the care and attention she paid to her car was one of the main reasons it had lasted so long.
Rachel Veitch bought her Mercury Comet Caliente for $3,289 in February 1964
In 2009 Rachel Veicht told Fox News: “When I buy gas, I write down the mileage, the date and how many miles per gallon I got. I’ve never been a destructive person and I’ve just taken care of everything, except my husbands.”
The car is said to be worth about $12,000 today and has been through three sets of shock absorbers and eight exhaust mufflers as well as surviving a rear-end collision in 1980.
It is due to appear in an antique car show in the state of Wisconsin in July, though Rachel Veitch says she is not sure what will happen to it after that.
Rachel Veitch has said she would consider selling the car to Jay Leno, a classic car enthusiast and host of the US late night chat show The Tonight Show.
“I haven’t talked to Jay Leno yet, but I’m wondering if he’s interested. But I don’t think I should start talking about it now,” Rachel Veitch told Fox News when news of her decision to stop driving emerged.
The former nurse has said, however, that she is adjusting well to life without her chariot.
“I know I’m not safe enough to drive, but I have taken it in stride,” she said.
While Rachel Veitch has clocked more miles than a trip to the moon and back, her car does not hold the record for the most miles travelled.
Irv Gordon entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 1998 with 1.69 million miles on his 1966 Volvo P1800. It is reported that he has now accumulated close to three million miles on the same car.
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Chariot singer Gavin DeGraw will begin a tour on October 9 with American Idol seven season winner, David Cook and Swedish alternative rock band, Carolina Liar.
Gavin DeGraw starts fall tour in October.
The tour starts in State College, Pennsylvania and ends in Orlando, Florida on November 12. David Cook will co-headline Gavin DeGraw in all cities, except Orlando. Carolina Liar will open for them in Columbus, Ohio on October 10 and will be special guest in all cities but York, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio, Greenville, South Carolina.The tickets are available from September 16, but a pre-sale started on Wednesday.
David Cook will perform from his new album This Loud Morning. The Last Goodbye single was very well received as well as Fade Into Me. Cook’s The Time of My Life went platinum.
From September 14, Gavin DeGraw new album Sweeter (which will be release on September 20 on RCA Records) can be pre-ordered at walmart.com.
Gavin DeGraw fourth studio album has a “wide variety of styles” which due to his wide range of musical influences. Gavin enjoys “classic soul music, rock, modern rock and certain types of just beat rhythm music” and the ten tracks are “really a combination of all the stuff.”
Gavin DeGraw will play melodies from Sweeter on the tour. Not Over You( (not related with his ex-girlfriend he said) is “a soulful majestic ballad” (Entertainment Weekly), a“hot single” and his “welcome return” to the airwaves (People Magazine).
Gavin DeGraw Sweeter will be released on September 20.
Gavin DeGraw debut album Chariot sold more than 1 million copies, earned platinum certification and had three hits: I Don’t Want To Be, Follow Through, Chariot. In Love With A Girl, and the gold-certified We Belong Together are the hits from his second album. DeGraw had a tour with rockers Maroon 5 and Train over the summer.
Gavin DeGraw interrupted the summer tour on August 8 because early in the morning he was beaten by three men and hit by a car, had a broken nose, concussion and bruises and was admitted to the hospital for a day.
The piano player told Today that the scars were mainly internal (poor memory regarding that night). Singer said he had been out for a drink with friends and had been walking home down a street in New York’s East Village. Three persons said something to him (“the tone was weird”) and “the lights went out.” Still no arrest has been made.
“I was very bloody, which caused me to panic, which made it that much worse. I am told I got clipped by a taxi. My head was so rocked from the concussion that my balance was off and my vision was blurred. The 911 call was, ‘Hey, I just saw this guy get hit by a taxi.’ Whether I got clipped by it, or possibly went up to it to say ‘can you help me?’ (I don’t know).”
Gavin DeGraw making of a Video "NOT OVER YOU" (Photo by Brad Barket/PictureGroup)
Gavin DeGraw said he had other priorities than his voice affected by broken nose, to meet his family at his mother’s 60th birthday the next week.
“We were all supposed to meet in Nashville for a show, and just seeing their faces after this was really the worst thing. But then after realizing how bad off I was by the looks on their faces, that’s when I started concentrating on my voice and thinking I could have trouble.”
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