Why always me?

So here I am in the middle of the Gulf. It wasn't too easy getting here though.
I took the train from Stony Brook to Jamaica then hopped onto the Airtrain to get to JFK. There I hopped onto an airplane to Charlotte in South Carolina. We were late taking off, and then getting in we played the famous game of taxiing all around the runways - they gave the familiar "check your front pouch for layouts of the airport" so that we could find our connecting gates. As time ticked down and my comfortable two hour layover dwindled I caught myself thinking - well I wish it was an airport like O'Hare or Frankfurt or even JFK which I "know", that way I'd should be able to find my gate more quickly.
When I finally got off the airplane with half an hour to find my gate I learned two things:
a) I have been to Charlotte - it's the airport with the rocking chairs in one of the main concourses.
b) Running all those sprints the past two weeks in rugby practice has paid off.
I got to my gate even before they were boarding and before I knew it I was in an itty-bitty airplane headed to Gulfport. I even managed to get there with my checked luggage and all!
I met up with my Aunt and Uncle and we headed towards New Orleans. I had a great weekend of catching up with my family "down South":
We paddled through the bayou (no alligators, just a few crabs and cranes).
We drove through New Orleans (surprising how closely together you have nicely renovated houses/properties and ones still bearing Xs and numbers put there by the military).
We walked through downtown New Orleans (I like it... I should go back someday to explore more).
We even walked down Bourbon Street (Been there, done that. I'm good now - and I certainly don't need to go back during Marti Gras!)
And then too soon we said good-bye.
The shark survey is run out of a lab in Pascagoula, MS and so there was a van driving from there to Galveston, TX were we joined the OREGON II for the final leg of the survey which should take us back to Pascagoula by the end of September.
Now I've seen a lot of Louisiana and quite a bit of Texas and after 6hours we made it to the port. Ports nowadays are "pseudo-supersecure": There are all kinds of rules and regulations (quite strict actually) about who can come in how and when and we'd all forwarded are names and ID numbers to the ship who put us on a list which was then given to the gate. Guess who was the only person who somehow didn't manage to be put on that gate list?
Yes, yours truly. We spent almost half an hour going over lists and talking to the ship and finally the security guard said: It's no big deal. I can let all of you through, the young lady (yes that's me) will just have to stay here until you've added her to the list and emailed it to the gate.
Yes, I did eventually make it onto the ship but not before I spent half an hour sitting in the guardhouse watching football, flipping through "Guns and Ammo" magazines and feeling very Texan.