Final Journey Together: Murrieta Native to Bike Father's Ashes From SoCal to China

A 29-year-old Murrieta native has loaded his 1990s “vintage” mountain bike with the bare necessities, and will leave this week on a bicycle journey to carry his father’s ashes to China.

Yes, you read that right.

Julian Wong, a 2002 graduate of Murrieta Valley High School, will leave Murrieta, cycle approximately 2,500 miles through the southern United States to Orlando, Fla., before boarding a plane July 30 to Norway.

From Norway, he will continue for the remaining 5,000 to 6,000 miles east through Europe, and central Asia, en route to the city of Guangzhou in the province of Guangdong in southern China.

“This will be a journey connecting my father's hometown with mine,” Wong said.

Logging 70 to 90 miles a day, Wong is expecting the trip to take at least a year. He will camp along the way, or on bad weather days stay in hostels, inexpensive motels, with friends or friends of friends.

“I can’t put an end date to it,” Wong said. “I will just be going day-to-day, living life to its fullest and enjoying the fact that there are so many things you can not control.”

Riding his bike long distances is something he has had some practice with. Last year, Wong rode 2,500 miles through Alaska, from Fairbanks to Denali.

“The beauty of it is there is nothing extremely special about it,” Wong said about his bike. “There are no fancy gadgets; it was built very durable."

If his father, Karming Wong, were alive, he knows he would want to accompany him.

“My father...was a very inspirational man who escaped China when he was 18 and settled in California in the early 1970s.”

Wong is one of four children of Karming Wong and Alicen Diane Clark, who met in 1976 in Oakland. The couple settled in Murrieta in 1979.

While growing up on a parcel of land in northwestern Murrieta, Wong and his siblings were taken on “countless” trips to China and southeast Asia.

“(My father) loved to travel and would often pull me out of school for several months while we traveled overseas,” Wong said. “Often against the better judgement of family members, he would make plans others thought were too crazy to execute with kids in tow.”

For example, in 1992, the family of six—including Wong’s 2-year-old sister—went on a six-month pilgrimage of India, Nepal and Sikkim.

The elder Wong died in 2011 of congestive heart failure in what Wong described as a slow demise. He described his father as healthy until the last 10 years of his life, dying at age 66.

“I am left with his inspiration and wanderlust and a feeling of loss,” Wong said. “We had many bonding experiences but most of them were through traveling. Last year I came up with the idea to have one last adventure with him. It was his wish to have his remains taken back to China and this trip will give me the last opportunity to travel and experience the world with him.”

Before Wong leaves on June 11 or 12, his mother and his three siblings plan to have a quiet memorial, then pack Karming’s ashes onto his son’s bicycle.

Wong’s sister, Lucy, said she was not surprised by her brother’s latest adventure.

“It is really awesome—a little scary—but it will be a great adventure for him,” Lucy said. “He is going to be gone for a long time, but it will be good closure for him. It is something our dad would have approved of.”

Read more about Wong and his family, and follow his journey on his blog at Pilgrimsandashes.com.

“Biking across the world is an endeavor he would have greatly appreciated. I would never have dreamed of a trip like this if it weren't for the influence of my father,” Wong said.