BILL WEIR discovered travel while still in school and has never tried very hard to settle down. A bicycle ride across the United States with Bikecentennial in 1976 inspired the idea of the ultimate ride--a cycle tour around the world. He got started writing guidebooks on that trip in 1979 by sending suggestions to the author of Moon Handbooks South Pacific while island-hopping there. That led to paid assignments with the publisher to update parts of the Indonesia handbook for five cents a word. When Weir returned to Arizona after four and a half years of travel, he started thinking of places about which to write a guidebook. Realizing that the best place lay under his feet, he wrote Moon Handbooks Arizona . Utah beckoned next, and Weir completed Moon Handbooks Utah a couple of years later. His bicycle, Bessie, collected dust for a while, but they returned to Asia in 1995 to finish the round-the-world ride via the Middle East and Europe.

He continues to explore the world, a good bit of it by bicycle, as well as enjoying Arizona travels and writing.