Thirteen hours is a long time to sit in a plane seat, but my trip did make me miss college.

I was seated beside two rising sophomores at the University of Virginia, or as the Wahoos say, two rising “second years.” They bought tickets to three events — diving, basketball and baseball — through RazorGator. They thought their basketball tickets were for a men’s game. Turned out, they said, to be for a women’s game between Ukraine and Cuba.

“It’s going to be awesome,” the guy from Nashville said sarcastically.

But the events were really secondary for them.

About midway through the flight, they pulled out their Frommer’s Beijing and started making plans for what they wanted to do.

“So do you want to go to the Forbidden City or Great Wall or anything?” asked the guy from Connecticut who has an aunt living in Beijing.

“That depends,” said the guy from Nashville. “Not if the trip’s epic-long or anything. I just want to go to some clubs. I think we should go out for three nights, go to an event, go out for four nights, go to an event.”

It sounded like they were going to have a good time … and made me wish I was going with them.