Speaker takes audience far off the beaten path.

Byline: INSIDE THE OUTDOORS By Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Robert Frost favored "The Road Less-Traveled." William Least Heat Moon opted for the "Blue Highways," so-called because of their color on maps where main routes are marked in red.

Willie Weir makes it a habit to look for what the locals describe as a "bad road" when he's traveling the world on his mountain bike.

Weir, a Seattle-based public radio commentator and adventure bicycle columnist, seeks out places that most tourists would avoid.

"To me travel, life, everything is about the bad road," Weir said in one of his commentaries on KOUW, the PBS affiliate in Seattle. "Because it's in those little tiny places that people typically tell you not to go where the adventure is."

In April of 2003, friends were telling Weir and his wife, Kat Marriner, not to go to Turkey for a long-planned three-month bicycle journey around that country.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, Turkey's next-door neighbor, began a week before they were to leave.

Weir and Marriner, of course, went to Turkey. He will talk about their experiences there and explore the question of "how do you decide when adventure is worth the risk" in a free slide-illustrated presentation Tuesday in Eugene.

"The Bad Road: Cycling Turkey" begins at 7:30 p.m. in 100 Willamette Hall at the University of Oregon.

Weir said he and his wife were never treated badly, even though the Turkish people generally were vehement in their opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"They never judged us based on our government's policies," he said. "We were treated as honored guests."

Out of concern for their visitors, the locals often urged Weir and his wife to take more-developed routes than what the locals described as "bad, bad, bad" mountain roads Weir had picked out on maps.

In more than 20 years of cycling around the world, however, Weir had developed a keen sense of how to make the most out of his chosen mode of transportation.

"The wider the road the less the chance you're going to have an adventure - unless you consider dodging motor homes and buses adventurous," he said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

The 43-year-old Weir is an engaging speaker, according to Dan Geiger of the UO Outdoor Program, which booked four earlier Weir presentations - on his bicycle journeys through South Africa, India, the Balkans and Cuba.

"He's one of our favorite presenters, for sure," Geiger said. "I've seen a lot of these presentations over the years and he's one of the few people who, with a few simple images, can enrapture an audience from the beginning just with his storytelling - it's amazing."

Weir's abilities to captivate an audience are not surprising. He's a trained actor. And Weir has no shortage of material for his adventure stories, having pedaled more than 50,000 miles around the globe.

It started with a cross-country bike trip he and a buddy took on the "Bikecentennial" route shortly after they graduated from high school.

"I had seen that as a once-in-a-lifetime trip," Weir said, "but it was so incredible and the magic of what I learned was so strong. ... When the travel bug bit again, I realized that the mode of transportation had been just as important as the journey."

His next journey was a ride across Canada. Then he headed south through Mexico, ending in Guatemala.

"Mexico is what changed everything," he said. "I had been afraid to travel in a country where I didn't speak the language."

The next year, he spent four months in Central America.

Weir also landed an ideal job - as a tour guide for Bicycle Adventures. "I ended up leading people on bicycle tours along the Oregon Coast."

As far as Weir is concerned, "the litmus test for adventure is whether or not you're facing a fear or risk." So the guided tours don't count as adventures.

"The tour guides used to joke that our job as an adventure travel guide is to make sure the clients never have one, because if they do they'll want their money back - and if have a really great adventure, they'll sue you."

Nonetheless, the fair-weather job meant Weir would be laid off during the winter, when he would do his own traveling. His job funded trips to Mexico, Central America, New Zealand and India. Air travel expenses aside, his bike adventures have all been "incredibly inexpensive," Weir said. "India cost $1,000 for five months."

During that long trip to India, Weir began sharing his experiences with folks back home via commentaries aired on KOUW in Seattle. He also became a columnist for Adventure Cyclist Magazine. Many of his best stories are in his book, "Spokesongs: Bicycle Adventures on Three Continents."

Rick Steves, another PBS travel expert, says "reading Willie Weir is like bouncing along on the back of his bike, hanging tight to this poet/guide who knows just which potholes offer the most travel thrills and hits them expertly."

Eugene-area cycling and travel buffs will have an opportunity to do the same Tuesday.

Mike Stahlberg can be reached at [e-mail].

CAPTION(S):

Willie Weir heads along a road with the backdrop of Turkish hill country during one of his cycling adventures.