For me, the best thing about living in the D.C. area is the fact I'm within reasonable driving distance of numerous Division I schools.  This gives me a great opportunity to see quite a few games during the regular season, and even the postseason--as I think back to the four conference championship games I was lucky enough to witness in person back in 2008.

Now that we're two months away from the official start of the 2009-2010 college basketball season, I've been spending entirely too much time thinking about what games I plan to see in person during the (generally) non-conference portion of the year.  Some of these plans are tentative (several games listed for that day should be a dead giveaway for that), while others, including my big trip for the year, are set in stone.  I'll get into specifics after the jump. 

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I know I don't travel as much as most people, but I've been lucky to have not encountered the delays and technical problems that most travelers encounter...until yesterday. My original 7 am flight to Chicago, which had a 10:30 Eastern connection to Kansas City, never got off the ground at BWI. The problem? The water system on the plane didn't work. No toilets malenga!

Southwest then decided to move us to another plane, positioned at the gate across the hallway. Yes, de-boarding and re-boarding are as much of a pain in the ass as you might imagine. The only good thing about it was that the passengers flying to Austin from Chicago had to be put on another plane. They said those of us bound for KC would make our connection.

I think the hopes of that died when they realized they had to de-ice the wings. I had the perfect seat to watch this exercise. I think the guy sitting in the elevated basket all bundled up like Nanook of the North thought he was playing a nice joke on us, as he must have started pulling the trigger for at least 20 times, always pulling back before any de-icing fluid would come out, until on the bazillionth attempt, it finally did.

We got on the ground in Chicago about five minutes before my flight to KC was due to take off. Being stuck on the runway waiting for traffic to clear. So much for my hour and a half layover at Midway. Luckily, they were able to squeeze me onto the next flight into KC.

The Kansas City experience has been pretty good so far, though. The rental car is an issue, as Alamo evidently doesn't extend the XM subscription on their cars past the 30 or 90 days offered at installation. I immediately made my way to a bar, where I was able to enjoy some Boulevard Brewing products and watch the Cuse upset Notre Dame. To celebrate, I then checked into my hotel (Thank you, Hotwire!) and too knackered to do much more, got some room service and watched Oregon State sneak by Arizona and a whole bunch of not-so-close games. Goodbye TTech, you will be missed.

Bowl projections are coming at some point. Arrowhead awaits!