Alan James Vaughn

Alan James Vaughn is an artist, entrepreneur and builder of bicycles, in particular the designer of several bikes that have won major awards and set speed records, and devised biking products that were slated to be used by the Tour de France.

Early life

Alan Vaughn, an AriZona Artist was born at Eglin AFB, Florida to Forrest Edward and Velma Loreen Vaughn. in 1959. By 1965, he had started painting Chopper Motorcycles on illustration boards using Testors model paint. With painting limiting his creativity, he starts building chopper-style bicycles by adding longer forks from salvaged bicycles found at the local dump in Florida. This continues for several years until he starts making money mowing lawns and can afford some new parts for his bicycle projects.

He took many art classes in high school, after moving to El Paso after the death of his father, paying for his education and LifeStyle through small projects and art. After leaving the University of Texas at El Paso, he entered the Air Force in 1979, where he remained for several years, working with the aerospace industry.

Career

In 1987, Alan became the Director of Operations for National Off-Road Bicycle Association. (NORBA). With Mountain Bikes becoming popular, his fixation on bikes begins to turn into a paying career. In 1988 Alan started Sun Eagle Bicycles and started producing custom off-road trailers. Shortly thereafter, he changed the name of the company to Talon Cycles and startsed designing and hand building custom off-road frames. The 3rd design he came up with was slated for testing in Mountain Bike Action.

In 1989, Alan built a low weight/high strength bicycle trailer that is no wider than a pair of mountain bike handle bars. This design is used by Ronald and Sandra Slaughter in setting the US record for tandem bicycling, having traveled 18,077.5 miles around the world from December 30, 1989 to July 28, 1991 as listed in the Guinness World Records book. Spurred by this early success, Alan refines his design, and comes up with a radical bicycle that Michael Secrest( Previous Winner of The Race Across America) used to set a New Guinness World Records for a Paced Distance of 1256.8 miles in 24 hours at Phoenix International Raceway on April 26 - 27, 1990. It uses a negative racked front fork, elevated right chainstay and a 92 tooth front chain ring.

Later career

Beginning in 1994, Alan took Talon Cycles in a different direction. Using the knowledge gained from working in the aerospace industry, he developed a system to Teflon coat bicycle cables to reduce friction and wear. These were branded as "Slick Whips" and became a near standard product. Some of these are used in the bikes on the Tour de France.

As of 2000, Alan Vaughn devoted most of his spare time to Art, Disc Golf and Electronic Dance Music. He is a member of the Arizona Artist Guild and the Professional Disc Golf Association.