The 365 Challenge--a new beginning!

Hi Friends;

I know some of you quite well and others of you not so well, at least on a personal level. As some of you may know, I have been a Type 1 Diabetic for the last 12 years and change, and that has motivated a lot of my adventuring and climbing. Of recently my wife and I have decided to throw our effort into using the platform of our adventures to do something a bit more meaningful to the community at large, and we began a project to raise funding and awareness for the JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) and the conditions of Type 1 as a whole.

This means that instead of just going out and playing in nature, we will be documenting our adventures more thoroughly and incorporating them into our project which we are calling the 365 Challenge. Basically we (well I will, Stefanie has a bit more leeway if she needs a rest day) will climb for 365 consecutive days beginning Jan 1 2012 and will be donating a portion of our proceeds to the JDRF and will use this opportunity to bring publicity to this condition and show how we are dealing with it.

I am very very excited about it; this is my passion and my life and I am going to go out there and give this project a shot. It could develop into something much larger but for now we are trying to keep our focus centered on what we need to accomplish immediately.

I will be doing most of my blogging from this point forward under a different site: www.livingvertical365.blogspot.com and it would be GREATLY appreciated if you would join me at that blog and follow and support my adventure. Knowing that people are reading and actually give a rats ass makes a HUGE HUGE difference!

Please share the living vertical blog with your friends, follow us on Facebook and Twitter and stay tuned! This is going to be a wild, wild ride!

Steve Richert...over and out, for now...