Earlier today The Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope made its 2005 Rider Application available. The application reveals a number of important details about the event:

• The coast-to-coast ride will begin in San Diego on Thursday, September 29 and end on Saturday, October 8 at The Ellipse in Washington, DC.
• Training camps are tentatively scheduled from June 10-14 and August 26-30.
• There will be 20 places on the team. Last year about 1,200 people applied to participate.
• Applications are due by Wednesday, April 20, at 11:59pm Eastern Time.
• Additional information of this nature can be found in the Team Application FAQ.

The odds of anyone making this team are long, particularly since it appears that Tour of Hope organizers will base their initial applicant screen entirely on the responses placed on a series of web-based forms. In previous years, Tour of Hope team applicants must have put together multimedia presentations, akin to those some people created who applied to participate in The Apprentice television series. Such presentations, letters of recommendations, and other supporting materials are said to be prohibited this year.

I've told a number of people who supported me in the 2004 Tour of Hope DC Fundraising Ride that I am planning to apply to be a rider in the 2005 Tour of Hope coast-to-coast ride. I have until April 20 to submit my application. I am going to use the time to carefully consider my responses and see if I can do some of the activities that the application suggests are good indications of a rider's ability to complete the coast-to-coast ride.