Early Wednesday evening, they gather in the side parking lot and head out for a 90-minute ride on a few routes through the city before coming back to wet their whistle on the wide variety of in-house brews the brew master creates at Red Dragon.
“The group is open to everyone,” said Red Dragon owner Mark Perry. “Some ride in from Stafford,” he added.
One of the lead riders is Bill Evans, a cyclist who went to high school with Perry. Bill’s brother Tom and another rider, Dan Baker, are part of the core group. Sometimes there are 30 riders, and in cases of rain, some riders come anyway and sit down for a cold one instead of riding. Bike Works and Old Town Bicycle support their rides in Fredericksburg.
The Red Dragon menu has a variety of beers, all brewed on site, and some locally made sodas that are frequently mixed with the beers for particular flavors. The sodas are from Maggie’s, a small business on nearby Caroline Street that features subs, hot dogs, and salads. On Maggie’s soda list, they have root beer, orange dream, cream soda, ginger ale, and ginger ale ‘heat,’ with an extra kick.
When mixed with Red Dragon’s beers, they become drinks on the menu like “Orange Creamsicle Sour,” “Here Be Dragons,” or “Black Jack,” to name a few. They also serve a beer called the “Road Rash Red,” a name connected with the biking world.
Perry served as a military pilot and owns a stake in the Rail House Brewery in Aberdeen, N.C.
Red Dragon is part of the Fredericksburg Area Beer Trail, an established route beer connoisseurs use while making a beer run into a day trip. There are 11 area breweries on the trail, and there’s a passport all trail users can download to keep abreast of happenings along the trail. At each brewery, the passport can get stamped, and once it’s full, prizes are awarded.
Soon, the Red Dragon cyclists can ride on a new trail portion along Lafayette Boulevard between Twin Lake Drive and St. Paul Street in the City of Fredericksburg. This $2.37 million project includes a new section of path that will connect with an existing shared-use path on Lafayette Boulevard that currently terminates at St. Paul Street.
The path will be accessible, with ramps and crosswalks built where the route intersects with Twin Lakes Drive, Springwood Drive, Kensington Place, and St. Paul Street. It is expected to be completed this November.
[Photo by Mike Salmon]