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Originally Posted by badgoodDeb
Ahh - I must have heard the "Philly" from a youth story. I thought you were currently there.
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Nope. Grew up there, but moved up to NYC around 1977.
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I have family outside of the Harrisburg PA area, so I'll probably retire there.
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I took a school trip to Harrisburg a
very long time ago. I was in that area more recently - my SO's older brother was in the hospital in NC (and never came out.) My SO and I went down with a friend to visit, and came back via Harrisburg. We were driving back
into hurricane Sandy, which was ... interesting.
We stayed an extra night at a motel outside Harrisburg that was a truck stop, and the diner nearby was full of big rig drivers. One older couple having dinner were certain NYC was a scene of rioting and looting. I said "No. I live there. It isn't. The Police Commissioner put out the word, and
every cop in uniform is out of the street. And it's freezing cold and driving rain. I assure you, no one will be rioting and looting in
that! NYC is
not New Orleans."
A trucker I spoke to talked about encountering tornadoes, and said "You can get away just fine if you have a 200mph bike! By the time you're hitting 160 or so, it's throwing stuff at you, but you can just thumb your nose and keep motoring." Yeah, I just bet you can...
It was a straight shot across from Harrisburg to NYC, complicated at the end. The route took us to the Holland Tunnel into NYC, which was flooded out. There was a turnoff just before the tunnel entrance to go north to the Lincoln Tunnel, which was still operating. But that route went through Hoboken, which was largely flooded. We wound up stalled out in 2' of water at an intersection, and I had to get out and push till the engine would catch and we could travel again.
The Lincoln Tunnel lets out into upper Manhattan, which was a zoo. We finally managed to get past it. The dividing line where the power was out was 34th Street, and I live on 30th Street. My building was open, and I live on the second floor, so it was no problem to go up a flight of stairs, go into my place, grab a few necessities, and come back down. Driving in lower Manhattan was fun, because the traffic lights were out. There were few cars on the road, and the ones that were were going
very slowly and carefully. We went to Brooklyn where the power was still on and camped out with the friend we'd gone to NC with till power was restored. We had to toss out half the contents of the refrigerator, but that was the extent of the damage.
Fun, for suitable values of the term.
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Currently I work at Fermilab, in Batavia IL, so if you'd like a tour of a high-energy proton accelerator ..... (why then I'll bring along another friend who works here who remembers the physics stuff better than I do, now that I'm doing computer stuff instead of physics!). But we do give tours. 
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Speaking personally, I'd be delighted. I think my SO and our friend would be too. We just got a stop on the prospective road trip...
I have an informed layman's grasp of the physics, but I'd brush up a little before taking the tour. I am probably better informed on the computer side.
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PS I grew up outside of Philly, so Philly struck a chord. Did all the Valley Forge things as school excursions. Missed the Gettysburg excursions that my parent's current location had already done in the lower grades.
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Never really did the Gettysburg or Valley Forge stuff. But Philly was once the capital of the new republic, and the place is littered with historical sites, most of which I have toured.
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Dennis