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I'm Ingrid Alongi, a developer in Boulder, Colorado. I'm currently a software engineer at Gnip. My world is now all about API integration and social media data. Previously, at OneRiot, I wrote web applications using Java/Wicket/CSS. I've also got a side project where I use CodeIgniter for PHP and absolutely love it. Diving into JQuery too.

I've been in the web development/interactive agency world for almost 10 years, with most of my experience in building database-driven web applications (PHP, ColdFusion) for consumer facing clients (e-commerce, email marketing, advertising, cms, etc.). Lots of strategy, lots of driving traffic back the web site types of stuff. Oh, and managing an amazing team of developers.

I'm an electronic music snob, ex national level cyclist, I play violin and cello, and have an MA in Women's Studies. You can contact me at ialongi at yahoo . com.

My bike is nicer than my car, part 1

April 12, 2009, 4:45pm by electromute

I was going to race the Omnium today at Boulder Indoor Cycling, and in my usual fashion of being slightly late, I don’t leave much time for errors, like forgetting my pedals. Being that it’s a bit of a gloomy day, I decided to take the opportunity to do something I haven’t done in a while–blog–and what better subject than the reason I got into blogging, cycling!

But soon, I won’t have to worry about forgetting the pedals because they’ll be permanently attached to my bike. BIC rents Fujis and Blues, which are fabulous to ride, but having one of my own will be even more fabulous!

David Tiemeyer ran a special for BIC members this winter on a custom track frame, so I decided to go for it. David has a rich background in building aerodynamic frames for some of the best cyclists in the world. He worked on the US National team frames with GT in the early 90’s, then went on to design the frames used in the Atlanta, Sydney and Athens Olympic games.

I went in for a custom fitting in February at his studio in Estes Park. As an engineer, I was truly impressed with the level of technology he employed for the fitting, which included measuring my heart rate and work output to decide what angles gave me the best advantage. After a few hours in his studio and a number of design revisions based on fork choices, etc, he came up with this:

Tiemeyer Track Frame Geometry

Once the design was agreed upon, David set out to do the actual welding. He let me know that he spends most of his time on design, while a smaller fraction on actual welding. This frame is made of aluminum with titanium drop outs. The fork is pre-built carbon (I’ll be getting the JetStream Oval fork rather than the one shown below).

Tiemeyer track frame unpainted

Now the bike is off to the paint shop, Spectrum Powder Works in Colorado Springs, to be exact, where they’ll give it a nice powder coat. Picking the color was the hardest part of the process and if I had a bigger budget, I would have done a few more fancy details. The nice thing is that I can always get this repainted in the future. For now, I’m going with the Red/Orange:

track frame color

Stay tuned for part 2, when I show the actual built bike and maybe I can talk someone into taking some photos of me actually racing it. I would really love to have an all black long-sleeved skinsuit with the Gnip logo on the back (hint, hint!)


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