STARS AND STRIPES ADVENTURE
The sand can be soft at Lightning Ridge, and it’s often impossible to judge its depth. Even a laced 19-inch front wheel can get twitchy and start sliding around in these conditions, and you know you’re getting adventurous when you’ve got 300kg+ of man, machine and accessories going sideways at 100km/h.
Luckily the excitement was short-lived, the movement being constrained and then controlled as Harley’s big Pan America found some grip, went back to rolling forwards instead of sideways and simply plowed on, regardless of the conditions. Big adventure tourers are perfect for these conditions, the combination of wheel sizes, geometry and capability making getting off the bitumen achievable for most riders.
In reality, all of the big adventure tourers would have coped with the corrugations, sand, potholes, washouts and ruts around Lightning Ridge, but many road bikes would have been a lot less comfortable.
Here at Australian Road Rider we like to test motorcycles in the environment they’re designed for – on the track for superbikes, on the open road for tourers, in the traffic with commuters and into the countryside with adventure bikes. So it was off to Lightning Ridge to tour test the Pan America, Harley-Davidson’s first shot at a modern adventure tourer.
Long days in the saddle, loaded up with gear, riding good roads, bad roads, dirt roads and
