The Greatest Motorcycle Photo | Hacker News Reader

The Greatest Motorcycle Photo

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140 pointskeepamovin85 comments

I beg to differ. This picture of Emile Leray, who disassembled his own broken car in the desert and built a motorcycle out of it is profoundly better.

https://thekneeslider.com/images/2022/01/leray-citroen-motor...

That needs the help of AI to remove the background, and then maybe it'll be a cool picture.

Why?

I think he is referring to the fact that the photograph is actually a photo of the real motorcycle with the photo I meant to post behind it, at a museum.

"On display in the Midwest Dream Car Collection museum" reads the caption."

I can't find the original, but here is another photo he took at the time:

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/103e0a_ac1383d327534f359c...

It's like some people don't even look at a picture and just scan it like it was text to be skimmed. If you don't have time to look at something, then please don't expect to understand the comments made by people that did.

Maybe if multiple people are asking for clarification on a comment it’s your comment.

I happen to like it with the photographic backdrop because it sets the scene and places the motorcycle in context.

What possible purpose would that serve

look at the right hand edge of the photo to put his comment in perspective.

It's a picture of the motorcycle in a display that includes the guy who built it? What does AI have to do with that?

It's a picture of the motorcycle in front of a picture of the guy that made it with the motorcycle off in the distance. So it's not a picture of a motorcycle, it's a picture of a picture. So if you want to show a picture of the motorcycle, removing the background would isolate the motorcycle.

I guess he feels the picture would be 'cooler' if the background was removed and AI has made image manipulation readily available to the masses.

Would you have the same reaction if he said ~"photoshop the background out"?

Yes, because it still doesn't make sense.

what about that does not make sense for you?...

Only if you think his story is true. I'm pretty sure it is more of an art project though. Mostly because from a survival perspective the story makes no sense.

But with all the photographs he took, he could survive years on his fame after a few extra days of tinkering.

From Wikipedia:

> He was stranded twenty miles from the nearest settlement, with only enough food and water to last ten days. To survive, Leray used parts of his broken-down car to build a motorcycle, and twelve days after the accident was able to drive it to a village 20 miles away.

I admire his ingenuity, but I would have probably just walked.

Yeah, walking 20 miles, desert or not, is a far better plan.

Figuring out how to carry enough stuff might be a problem, but making a sling or primitive backpack from the upholstery should be doable with a knife.

3-4 Mph is a reasonable walking speed, so 20 miles is around 6-7 hours. Not saying it would be pleasant, but certainly seems doable.

In the desert, you often really don't want to be walking midday, but if the moon is out doing 20 miles in a night isn't too bad, and doing it split over two days is fine. 5 or 6 liters of water plus some food would be plenty, depending on what you have available to carry that ~15 pounds splitting into two days may be more comfortable. Either way, infinitely less risky than building a motorcycle.

4 mph takes talent, especially over distance. Andthat’s on hard surfaces. From what I understand walking on sand is deceptively taxing. I’d say 2-2.5 and not as the bird flies distances. So ten to fifteen hours of walking if your feet let you.

The desert in question isn't all sandy dunes; there's a lot of rocky or compacted surface (see photo), so you can make pretty decent time (but yeah, sustaining 4mph would be pushing it for most people).

I've done 97km in 26 hours before, in the Sahara (I think we started around 8am, and finished around 10ish the next morning), which works out to about 2.3mph, so I'd agree 2-2.5mph is reasonable.

hmm, [0] this says the longest stage was 91km in 2009 (I did it in 2015), so I could be wrong, but I'm going by what my garmin told me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_des_Sables

The surface is hard enough to drive a car on. Walking can't be all that bad on such a surface.

That was my thought as well. He might not have had something to carry the food and water, but making something to carry it would probably be easier than building a motorcycle.

Why spend three days doing a one-off task when you can spend 10 days automating it?

https://xkcd.com/530/

Did he know the next settlement was only 20 miles away?

Really, really cool honestly.

Tiny question though, where the hell are his clothes?

It's a desert. I'm pretty sure the temperature is such that wearing anything but the absolute minimum would be extremely uncomfortable.

You know what’s really uncomfortable?

A full body sunburn.

Indeed, and traditional dress bears that out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb

The settlement was 20 miles away, but that doesn't mean he only drove 20 miles, or that he knew which direction the settlement was in!

I don't buy it.

This guy says the bike was built but the situation was staged; that seems possible. https://sahara-overland.com/2017/08/05/the-2cv-motorcycle-su...

More desert Mad Max shenanigans in just underwear!

I enjoy the backstory[1], though, about how he ended up that way:

> He was told the area was restricted and he couldn’t go through. Ignoring the request, he instead drove off at top speed into the rocky terrain of the restricted area, making sure the military officials weren’t following him, according to the site.

> Leray told the UK’s Sunday Times that he had travelled around Africa about 10 times so knew the region well. But before long, his he crashed the car into a rock, rendering it unable to drive.

[1] https://www.nydailynews.com/2012/07/03/photos-man-escapes-af...

Guess he didn't know the region well.

That’s not a cool motorcycle picture. You can argue that it’s a picture of a cool motorcycle but that’s really not the same thing.

I knew the submission would be a photo of Rollie Free on his Black Shadow before clicking the link. It is the motorcycle picture.

I have never heard of this mad max looking bike and frankly it doesn’t strike a chord with me.

For some reason this reminds me of Breaking Bad.

That man has complete faith in his rear mudguard.

welp that did not occur to me, he probably had it fortified in a way.

Anyone that has stepped on a scooter brake in their bare feet is wincing at the thought of the supports crumpling.

Fastest roasted nuts ever.

I don't think a photo could capture the vibe of American motorcycling any better than this one.

Crazy that he was 47 in it haha. I have always assumed he was younger.

Is it weird I thought about this other sort of adjacent iconic photo:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Blown_Away_Gu...

or possibly https://youtu.be/fHaIEG45JWE

A very cool picture, but a bit hard to look at right now. My daughter's "first crush" (a decade ago) just passed in a motorcycle accident. A "left hook" situation less than a mile from home. Stay observant out there!

This motorcycle was also the subject of a song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0kJdrfzjAg

(which maybe is the greatest motorcycle song?)

Wonderful magical machine (for straights).

Hunter S. Thompson loved it, too, and it shows up in his work:

https://www.vincent-hrd.co.uk/hst.html

> Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1970) > [At the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, planning to cover the Mint 400 Desert Race in Las Vegas]

---

"Well," he said, "as your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle. How else can you cover a thing like this righteously?"

"No way," I said. "Where can we get hold of a Vincent Black Shadow?"

"Whats that?"

"A fantastic bike," I said. "The new model is something like two thousand cubic inches, developing two hundred brake-horsepower at four thousand revolutions per minute on a magnesium frame with two styrofoam seats and a total curb weight of exactly two hundred pounds."

...

"It is," I assured him. "The fucker's not much for turning, but it's pure hell on the straightaway. It'll outrun the F-111 until takeoff."

---

In the mid 80s I used to pace the taking off B737s at Wellington, on the road next to the airport, on my CBX550F2 [1] and later on my K100RT. I could get to about 200 km/h before I had to slow for the corner. The planes were rotating at that point. The speed limit on that road is 50 km/h now, it was a little higher back then ... not enough obviously...

[1] https://hoult.org/cbx550.jpg

That is an epic story!

Hells Angels a Strange and Terrible Saga is a good read too, that last passage made me want to go out and buy one immediately.

"If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society."

- HST

From "Song of the Sausage Creature" (for Cycle World magazine, March 1995) mentioned there, definitely worth the quick read!

http://www.latexnet.org/~csmith/sausage.html

Never ever thought I'd see the great Richard Thompson on HN. Thank you!

FWIW, I'm surprised that his Millennial Tour/Concert:

https://www.richardthompson-music.com/2003-1000-years-of-pop...

hasn't been mentioned/discussed.

I am always impressed at how they managed to capture action shots like these in perfect focus, with the motorcycle moving at 150 miles per hour.

Cool indeed, but this is my favorite cycle picture. [1] It's technically a tricar, but given the handlebar controls and lack of bodywork, I think it qualifies. The vehicle is a Mototri Contal practicing for the 1907 Peking to Paris race [2]. These guys look like they want to win! They didn't, almost dying in the process. The passenger is a journalist. Motor-journalist Denis Jenkinson [3] did something similar later, acting as navigator for Stirling Moss in the 1955 Mille Miglia race, which they won.

[1] <https://ccnwordpress.blob.core.windows.net/journal/2019/02/M...>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_to_Paris>

[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Jenkinson>

Presumably this was what inspired Burt Monroe who broke the record in 1967 and was the subject of the movie "The Worlds Fastest Indian". I have always admired the engineering ingenuity of folks who break these records and never quite understood why the risk was worth it. :-)

Humans are notoriously bad at risk based decision making. This applies equally to being cautious or daring.

That's a classic for sure. I would suggest a "heel clicker in a supercross race"[0] is also worth consideration, given the difficulty and risk involved.

0 - https://ultimatemotorcycling.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/...

Marvin Musquin won that one too, didn't he?

And I thought Burt Munro was a character....

There were a few years of professional cycling when people did this on downhills until they outlawed it. You don’t have much control when doing this. At least on the salt flats the whole point it to try to go in a straight line, so if you need to turn you’re already in dire straits.

This technique is still in common use here in the Dominican Republic, among honda cub street racers. It’s interesting that the most vibrant motorcycle racing scene is with motorcycles that were never meant to go fast and lack the frame stiffness or suspension to safely go above 50mph. I think the challenge of overcoming these limitations is what makes it compelling to the young riders and would-be-engineers that typically make up the illegal racing scene.

I find it absolutely wild that he did it in just his grundies.

I'm trying to imagine how he slowed down.

Just keeping his legs clear of that 150 MPH tire is its own feat.

Not to be a kinematics nerd, but the top of that tire was going 300 mph

Not in relation to his body which is the concerning interaction. Though contact with a 150mph tire would have had similar if not the exact same consequences as a 300 mph tire.

I love that a throwaway comment about a man in his underwear got as nerdy as this.

Yes, you're correct. The man is travelling 150 mph and the top of the tire 300 mph, so the delta is only 150 mph.

Relative to the (local) surface of the Earth, at least.

Aren't the break handles on the steering bar much like a bicycle? Never owned or rode a motorbike so I would not know.

Typically the left lever is the clutch, right lever is the front break, and your right foot has a lever for the rear break. Not sure what the setup was for the record breaking motorcycle though.

*brake :)

Note that the bike pictured does not have a front brake. So I’m guessing he went back to his starting position at some point to hit the brake pedal. He first probably just rolled off the throttle until the bike got to a much slower speed. “Probably” meaning, it’s what I would have done, having already decided that riding a motorcycle at 150mph in my underwear is a good idea.

No. Usually one of the brakes (I forget which) is actuated with a pedal, and one of the handle levers (what would be brakes on a bicycle) controls the clutch.

https://www.rideto.com/blog/motorcycle-controls/

Imagine the gravel rash if all goes pear shaped.

It's typically called "meat crayon". No need to look it up... it is like when a crayon is dragged across a piece of paper, and leaves behind a line of like color.

At 150MPH, I doubt he’d be alive long enough to care about the gravel rash

It would illustrate the phrase "rubbing salt into someone's wounds" nicely

“If hitting water at 150mph feels like concrete, what does concrete feel like?” — road racing saying.

reminds me of this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Fastest_Indian

based on the life of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Munro

quite remarkable actually, and a damn good movie.

For me it is Evel Knievel high above the Caesers Palace fountain. So many extreme sports descend from his daredevilry.

If you enjoy this sort of automotive history, check out Brian Lohnes on YouTube

Thank You! :)

Amazing shot capturing a pivotal moment in motorcycling history. The technical precision required to time this at 100mph with a 1/1000 shutter speed is astounding. It exemplifies the fearless spirit that drove the sport's pioneers. Truly an iconic image that has stood the test of time.

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