I’ve officially signed up for the Step Out to Fight Diabetes walkathon.  I formed a NASA/MSFC team, with the intention of challenging the other NASA centers to try to beat our fundraising total.  I think you have to be in the Huntsville, Alabama, area to join the team, but sponsorships/donations should be possible from anywhere, with the magic of internets.

Here’s the link to my personal Step Out page, where you can sponsor me, join the team, and/or see how well I’m doing in my fundraising efforts.

The team is called NASA/MSFC, and that page lets you see who all the team members are and how much we’ve raised so far.  Pick anyone on the list of members and give them money, if such is your intent.

This means a lot to me.  I hope you’ll consider helping me out.

Here’s an interesting thing.  The American Diabetes Association is doing a national fundraiser from September to November called Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes.  It’s a walkathon kind of deal, as you may have guessed from the title.  I’m posting this before I sign up, so I’m sketchy on details, but there’s one here in Huntsville and another in Birmingham, about seven different towns in Florida, and two hundred cities in all.  It’s about three miles, I hit people up for donations, and the money goes to a cause close to my heart.  A little down and to the right, to be precise.

Apparently, you can donate through the ADA website, so there’s no downside to my shilling this here.  I don’t think you need to be diabetic to participate, which is good considering that non-diabetics have more feet on average than we do.

Diabetes is ridiculously prevalent in modern society and becoming moreso every day.  Odds are, someone you know has it.  Besides me, that is.  It’s no fun, it’s expensive, and it leads to or exacerbates a whole host of other health issues, one of which will probably eventually be fatal.  Research to date has led to some breakthroughs, but there’s no cure or preventative on the shelf just yet.

Yes, there are awards if I raise $X.  I don’t care.  If I can refuse them and have that value go toward research instead, that’s what I plan to do.

So, yeah.  Check it out.  If you were planning on begging your friends for money and walking three miles anyway, why not do it for a good cause?  It’s 600 calories you weren’t using anyway.  Or, offer me money for my sweat.  Metaphorically; I’m not mailing anything out.

UPDATE:  I’m trying to get my workplace organized to create a national team for this event.  The registration process is a little opaque, so I can’t tell if signing up as an individual would prevent me from joining a team.  Hopefully, it’ll only be a couple of days until I can tell you where to sponsor on my behalf.  If you want to go ahead and set up something now, just pick somebody.  The money all goes to the same place in the end.