By Lee Klancher
[This article is destined for Robb Report Motorcycling. I'm putting it up here for comments. Fire away . . . ]
As the sun rose over Lake Superior, Dick Burleson piloted a KTM 950 Adventure to the top of the ancient chunk of granite that watches over the town of Marquette, Michigan. This battered old rock has survived four ice ages. The heavy ice pushed the mountains of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula into the earth and, 11,000 years later, they are still rising back up.
Nearly three decades after winning his eighth off-road championship, Burleson is still one of the faster off-road riders in the country. Active and fit, the compact 58-year-old man is a bundle of high energy who relishes a tough challenge on two wheels.
Michigan is home for Burleson. He lives in Travers City and grew up in St. Joseph, both of which are on Michigan’s lower peninsula. His childhood was spent under the thumb of his father, who pushed him to become a concert pianist. Burleson worked hard to fulfill his father’s dream until he turned 18, but his path was more aligned with that of his outgoing, athletic mother. Having some freedom at a summer camp near Stueben in the UP allowed him to come to grips with that.
“When I was a kid, I went to a summer camp in the center of the UP. That was fantastic,” he said. “It was one of those things where you realize who you are and what you can do. They just threw us out there and let us have it. I realized I was pretty good at a lot of stuff. It was a big confidence builder for me.”
He enjoyed the camp so much he ended up working up there after he went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to study mechanical engineering. He started riding motorcycles in college, and took his Honda S90 with him up to camp to explore the area.
His love of riding led to racing, and Burleson became the best off-road racer in America. He dominated the sport from 1974 to 1981. After his racing career was over, Burleson became a factory rep for KTM and Moose Racing.
On this warm August morning, Burleson, myself, and my long-time riding buddy Mark Frederick are saddled on KTM 950s with the intention of spending three days revisiting some of Burleson’s favorite places in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
This was an assignment, sure, but I considered it a personal mission as well. I was turning 40 on the last day of the trip, and could think of no better way to do that than riding with one of my favorite motorcycle heroes.
The UP has 287 miles of designated off-road motorcycle trails, but that’s just the tip of the off-road iceberg up there. The area is about the size of Maryland, with only 328,000 residents. Three of the Great Lakes border the UP—Superior, Michigan, and Huron—with 1,700 miles of shoreline bordering vast tracts of national forest and land owned by lumber and mining companies.
The UP also features an abundance of waterfalls, lighthouses, beaches, and wilderness to explore. We based out of the Lake Superior port town of Marquette, Michigan, which has a historic downtown near the town’s harbor district.
After burning some pavement over to one of Dick’s favorite breakfast stops, we headed down some snowmobile trails near Trout Lake in the east central part of the UP. Burleson led us down a fire road that turned into a narrower trail and became a deep sandy trail and we soon found ourselves riding a gnarly little piece of singletrack.
Approaching a nasty rock-covered hill, I wondered how expensive it would be to replace the 950’s plastic if I dropped it as I attacked the hill. The big bike snorted and positively ate the incline for breakfast, the supple rear suspenders keeping the fat rear tire putting the big twin-cylinder’s ample power to the ground with aplomb.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, either by the KTM’s capability or by the fact that a dual-sport ride with a former enduro champion took about three hours to turn into an off-road ride.
Burleson rides hard for a man one-third his age, but he’s one of many riding off-road after becoming eligible for an AARP membership.
“Use it or lose it. If I stopped . . .well, first of all, I’d go postal,” Burleson said. “I’d lock up and be taking drugs so I can walk. You keep doing it and you can do it. Part of the issue, too, is these stinking motorcycles are so good. You don’t have to work it all the time. Just go ride.”
The bikes may be good, but Burleson is no slouch. With his 60th birthday just around the corner, he’s still one of the fastest riders in the country. At the 2005 Moose Run, a notoriously tough off-road race, Burleson finished inside the top ten.
“You have to have realistic expectations,” Burleson said. “There was a time up until I was 40, that if I was racing, I wanted to win. Now I would kind of like to win, but I’m not gonna. I want to do the best I can possibly do and maybe embarrass some young kids. The goal is a little different. Part of the issue is to ride within yourself and to do that, you’ve got to train. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
Burleson lives up to that. He maintains his physical condition with a combination of active sports and hard work at the gym.
That work pays off in speed, and he manhandled the big 950 through the woods with grace. The bike is so tall he has to hop off the side to touch the ground, but that doesn’t slow him down.
After our off-road foray near Trout Lake, we hit the pavement and turned up the wick on a bomb run to the 8,614-foot-long Mackinac Bridge. North of the bridge is a strip of the Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior’s Whitefish Bay that offers great beaches and sleepy little resorts. Along this shore on highway 123 on the way to Paradise, Michigan, we were treated to warm sun and a cool, fresh breeze blowing off the big lake.
The next leg of the journey was a cut through some of the two-track fire roads running west across the top of the eastern side of the UP. Bombing through a pine forest, a dark streak ran across the trail ahead of us and loped into the woods.
The tall, shaggy animal was one of the 434 wolves the DNR estimates live in the UP. That is a relatively small wolf population—Minnesota has more than 2,000—so the sighting was a rare treat.
The trail came out at the coast town of Grand Marais, a historic little town with gorgeous old homes lining sand-swept beaches on Lake Superior. Grand Marais is the gateway for Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a place that inspired 1820s explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. “Some of the most sublime and commanding views in nature,” he wrote.
The geographic features of note in the 70,000-acre park are the brown, tan and green cliffs lining 42 miles of Lake Superior shoreline. America’s first National Lakeshore, the wilderness park features waterfall-dotted outcroppings, which rise more than a hundred feet above the blue-green waters. Much of the lakeshore is only accessible by foot or water. There are also several overlooks in the park where you can walk from your vehicle to view the formations.
Our tour of the park was done as the light was fading, and we arrived at our hotel in Marquette at midnight with more than 500 miles of travel under our belts. Even Burleson’s famed energy seemed a bit sapped that night, but he was up at the crack of dawn the next day, bright, chipper and ready for another day of exploration when Mark and I came down for breakfast at 7:30 a.m.
We headed west of Marquette, intending to work our way up the Keweenaw Peninsula. The Keweenaw is one of the prime motorcycle destinations of the UP, a narrow sliver of land surrounded by rocky coastline and filled with intriguing two-track to explore.
We got sidetracked exploring the backcountry near the town of Big Bay. The town is a great off-the-beaten track destination, with old hotels and small town cafes.
On the final day of the ride—my 40th birthday—we left the 950s back at the hotel, and took off-road bikes into Dick’s favorite riding area, the Sands. He laid out the Loose Moose National Enduro there, one of the toughest off-road rides in Michigan.
Among the motorcycle industry, Burleson’s love of nasty off-road terrain is legendary. He has no sympathy for those who don’t share his tastes in challenging terrain.
While describing the reaction of participants to his enduro course, he had no patience for those who felt the race was too difficult. The complaints, he said, were simply more evidence of the “pussification of America.”
We parked at a trailhead in the area, and unloaded two KTMs off-road bikes and a Suzuki DRZ400S, a bit nervous about what was ahead. Following Dick Burleson around his home country is the equivalent of being led through the gates of Hades by Beelzebub. Both have intimate knowledge of their domains, and take delight in tormenting their victims.
Burleson led us through a gnarly piece of singletrack snaking through rocks, hills, and logs. I struggled with the 400, and Burleson took the bike and let Mark and I ride the KTMs, which were much better suited to the difficult terrain. At the time, I thought he was being gracious, but after some reflection, I think he just wanted to be sure we were able to survive his nastiest trails.
Burleson is fluid and graceful off-road, even on the heavy Suzuki dual-sport. One of the nastiest spots on the course was a rocky downhill. After a fairly arduous climb to the top of a house-sized block of granite, the trail dropped off the rock with a four-foot vertical cliff. The landing point was a steep jumble of head-sized rocks. I watched Burleson drop smoothly off the ledge to the trail below. I sat at the top, mustering my nerve to leap off.
“Don’t gas it,” Burleson said. “Just roll it and let the forks soak up the hit when you land.”
I took a deep breath, gently let out the clutch, kept my body centered on the bike, and rolled off the SX off the ledge. It landed awkwardly and squirted down the hill. Not pretty, but I made it.
Later that night, we had a great meal in Marquette and Burleson shared his views on riding as he approached 60 years of age.
“When I’m no longer able to run in the top ten in the country at a national-caliber race, I’ll quit,” he told us. “I figure I have ten more years in me.”
Aging is one of the universal life challenges, and everyone finds their own way to deal with it. Burleson deals with age like he did racing—well prepared and charging in at full-throttle.
He won a plus-50 downhill mountain biking title a few years back, and still spends his time wind surfing, mountain biking, running, and riding his off-road bike. I spoke to him in March 2007, and he had just returned from a visit to the doctor.
“My wife and I made a high-speed trip over to the Mayo Clinic,” he said. “I did a whole mega-industrial strength physical exam.”
He told me that his health was so good it surprised his doctor.
“My body fat was the lowest she’d ever seen. She was like, what?” he said, bursting into his distinctive staccato laugh.
Burleson’s eight enduro championships are a feat that may never be matched. The way he’s attacking life speaks volumes about why that is so. Like the ancient mountains rising back out of the Upper Peninsula, Burleson hasn’t let time keep him down.
Burleson Quotes
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not a team player.’”
—Dick Burleson, about his response to a request from the running coach at the University of Michigan, who noticed Burleson set the fast time at the U’s indoor track and wanted him to join the team
“It’s all part of the pussification of America.”
—Dick Burleson, responding to criticism from race participants that the course he designed for the 2006 Loose Moose Enduro was too tough
“The government has to protect us from ourselves.”
—Dick Burleson, commenting on a “trail closed” sign
“When I’m no longer able to run in the top ten in the country at a national-caliber race, I’ll quit. I figure I have ten more years in me.”
—Dick Burleson, commenting on racing at age 58
“If I stopped . . .well, first of all, I’d go postal.”
—Dick Burleson, on riding off-road after reaching 50 years of age
“Since my hand was big enough to reach an octave, my dad was convinced I would be a concert pianist . . . I was actually pretty good.”
—Dick Burleson, who played avidly until he turned 18
“I have a piano. It’s not fair to say I don’t play, but I don’t play.”
—Dick Burleson, who now plays only for fun with his grandkids
“My dad was easily the most conservative guy in the world . . . My mom was quite the opposite. She was very athletic and outgoing. We have pictures of her surfing behind a boat in 19-like-20.”
—Dick Burleson
“There was no money—zero. I had a Ford van. A buddy of mine loaned me $500 so I could buy a Husky . . . Half the series was on 250 and half was on open. I had two motors. I’d race on weekend and swap motors for the next week. The chassis were all bent. I’d drive in my Ford van and sleep in my van. You’d make maybe enough to pay for gas. There was no money in that.”
—Dick Burleson on racing against the Europeans in the 1970 Trans-AMA
