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UPDATED FOR 2017 On April 29th I will be setting aside my space helmet and putting on a bike helmet for the ADA's 2017 Tour de Cure - and we need your help. The Tour de Cure is the American Diabetes Association's primary annual fundraising event, raising more than $29 million yearly going towards diabetes research and education. According to the CDC, Almost 30 million Americans have diabetes, and if current health trends continue, it is expected that 1 in 3 born after 2000 will develop diabetes sometime in their life. It is officially the seventh (7th) leading cause of death in the US, and causes around $250 billion in medical costs annually. And that's just in the US! The WHO notes more than 422 million diagnosed cases worldwide as of 2014. I will be riding this year as a Red Rider: I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1998 and it has affected me every day since. I hesitate to say that I suffer from this disease, as I feel that I do not. To me, treatment is simple and straightforward, and I have good medical benefits to help me out. And I've been lucky. But I know others aren't nearly as fortunate as I am. Treatments aren't cheap, and poor control often leads to other expensive complications down the road such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, blindness, or kidney disease. None of these are any good, and with nearly one in ten people being diagnosed with diabetes, and with another one out of every four being at risk, this is closer to you and the people you love than you might think. Anyway, as you've probably figured out at this point, this is where you come in. My family and I will be riding in the Wichita Tour de Cure event on April 29. I've committed to raising $250 in donations before the event as part of my entrance requirements. The funds tracker below will link to my personal giving page on the Tour de Cure website. Donating through the website is pretty straightforward as long as you use a credit card or PayPal. If you can't use one of those options but still want to give, please PM me and we'll see what kind of arrangement we can work out. If you don't trust links you find on this website, you can type "tour.diabetes.org" into your address bar and follow the "donate" link at the top of the page, searching for my name (Dan Bender). In case you're wondering...no, I don't know why the progress image has the "TdC 25" logo. That was last year. I've e-mailed them about it. Also, if you want to give, but don't feel like it's appropriate to support some random joe on the internet like me, you can donate "directly" to the ADA from www.diabetes.org instead. Or, you can find a Tour event closer to home and participate that way! Participants don't touch the money that is donated through the website, the only difference is the dollars are "targeted" to the participants' efforts. But I appreciate a donation either way. Thank you all for your consideration.