CORVIDAROD

Making of…

Ok, so what was Corvidarod, why was Corvidarod, and how did y’all pull it off? 

Who was Corvidarod? 

Let’s start with WHO Corvidarod was – there were 10 racing teams with 5 people per cart, and 50+ people involved: 

  • 3GS&T – Murder on the Orient Express
  • Cartastrophe (2 carts) – RAVE-ns
  • Chidiots – Counting Crows
  • Chivengers – Crow’s Nest
  • HMS Reunion (2 carts) – Russel Crowes
  • Nomeward Bound (2 carts) – Edgar Allen Crow 
  • Six Pack Attack – Graceland Cemetery

Why was Corvidarod? 

It came out of the frivalry. Aka the “Friendly rivals” who put the FUN in fundraising… started talking about how fun doing a megateam collaboration would be back in 2023, and that it would be particularly apropos to do for Chiditarod’s 20th anniversary. 

Literally days BEFORE the race for Chiditarod 2023 the idea was mentioned, while we were all hyped on Chiditarod, we started brainstorming, and started up a Discord (3GS&T, Chidiots, Nomes, Six Pack Attack, and Emily Belke before she was a free agent). Chivengers and Cartastrophe expressed interest in 2023 as well. It was discussed at various informal group hangs at bars and beaches throughout the spring and summer. HMS Reunion joined the squad in November 2024 who brought the idea of sabotage/fake checkpoint to the group. 

We knew that it would probably take us 2 years to pull off, realistically. Because we all know the worst part of Chiditarod is trying to get a normal team of 5 or 10 people aligned on plans for anything, and trying to schedule planning and build days. Trying to do that for 5-15 carts and dozens of people would only be that much worse.   

Having HMS reunion lead the sabotage was brilliant – they could interface with the coreganizers to bless the idea and logistics, but since they weren’t as publicly tied in to the existing Frivalry, they could avoid tipping the coreganizers off to just how many teams were involved in the collaboration. 

And then somehow Liz Breen created an “oops all blackbirds” route, with 3GS&T, Chidiots, Nomeward Bound, and Six Pack Attack all on the same race route…

And that is how Corvidarod came to be

How did you pull this off? 

It was a spoke and hub model of teaming, for the organization design nerds out there.  We had a small group of megateam leads, who coordinated with team leads and committees, and a lot of distributed to teams build effort. 

We had a committee brainstorm, design, prototype, and test the crow hat build, and then each team separately built their own hats for the team. We shared information about what our unique cart themes would be, but weren’t involved in each other’s cart builds. 

Committees

  • Megateam Leads and Overall Coordination: Justin Gaetano, Lauren Haynes, Liz Lux
  • Team Captains: 
    • Chidiots: Justin Gaetano
    • 3GS&T: Liz Lux
    • Chivengers: Peter Alford, Betsy Gates-Alford
    • HMS: Tim Jeffries
    • Nomes: Ryan Freeberg & Lauren Haynes
    • SixPackAttack: Alysha Balog
    • Cartastrophe:  Rob Ludwin
  • Costume Committee
    • Nomes: Lauren Haynes and Alixa Sharkey
    • SixPackAttack:  Katie Fragakis
    • 3GS&T: Chyanne Husar
    • Cartastrophe: Sera Sousley and Rob Ludwin
  • Sabotage Committee
    • HMS Reunion: Tim Jeffries, Graeme Miller,
    • 3GS&T: Amy Bashiti
    • Nomes: Pocket Earnhart, Shane Cochran
  • Fundraising Committee
    • 3GS&T: Liz Lux and Amy Bashiti
    • Nomes: Nik Allen and Lauren Haynes
    • SixPackAttack:  Alysha Balog
    • HMS Reunion: Graeme Miller

We had a lot of folks take on individual or small group execution of things

  • Costume design:
    • Crow hat prototyping and pattern modification: Lauren Haynes (Nomes) 
    • Wing and Body prototyping and pattern: Alixa Sharkey (Nomes) 
    • Want to be a crow yourself? Check out our costume document! 
  • Cawwing Cards design and procurement: Alysha Balog 
  • Crow Bar
    • Coreganizer coordination and approval: Tim Jeffries and Graeme Miller – HMS Reunion
    • Bar Scoping: HMS Reunion + Nomeward Bound: Tim Jeffries, Jordan Snow, Nik Allen 
    • Corvidarod Flag and Grudge sashes: Amy Bashiti
    • Grudge Book and checkpoint award creation: Pocket Earnhardt
    • Assembling the Grudge nest and  “found cards” crow’s tarot: Shane Cochran
    • Crowbar timecard stamp: Tim Jeffries procurement + Alysha Balog crow glyph design
    • Handbills, flyers, and unkindness business cards: Lauren Haynes and Nik Allen
  • Megateam Fundraising Event coordination: Liz Lux 
  • Corvidarod Website: Lauren Haynes w/support from Nomes
  • Raceday photography: Gustavo Martin
  • Corvidarod logo: Kristi-Lynn Jacovino 

And there were a whole lot of comms from Lauren that looked like this

Timeline

Initial Megateam discussions started in 2023

March 2, 2023 – days before Chiditarod 2023

 

Hilarious foreshadowing to “Oops all Ravens” that actually happened

Additional communications tools go in to place in April 2023 with addition of a Discord server

August 2023 Beach Hang

Some discussion of themes, etc

Much of the commitment and planning to doing the thing happened in 2024 

January, February

Lots of talk about next year’s MegaTheme on Discord. Wrestling got varied enthusiastic pro/con reactions. 

Realized Alysha and Amy were in costume at the same Lebowski fest before they knew each other through Chiditarod

August 2024

August brewery crawl brings up more talk – Legos? Cicadas?

Decided “if we’re doing this, we need to know by like… November” kind of what we’re doing in case it impacts registration and requests to race together. 

October 2024 

Survey #1 was sent out. 

November 2024

Justin adds HMS Reunion to the discussion. 

November 9, 2024: Group meeting at Burning Bush Brewery

Because we do our best thinking at breweries, we gather to riff on proposed themes and talk carts and costumes execution in a little more detail. 

This is about how it went down: 

  • Ryan from Nomeward Bound: One of my favorite carts from years past was the esoteric “5 dudes dressed as shopping carts and the cart dressed as a human”. 
  • Tim from HMS Reunion: “That was us!” 

HMS Reunion brings up the idea for sabotage. 

  • HMS : we got prior approval from the organizers for running a fake checkpoint as sabotage. 
  • Nomes: Lol we’ve joked for years about sabotaging with a fake finish line at District Brew Yards, we’re in! 
  • If we’re all crows… crows can kind of hide judge robes… 

November 11, 2024: Second Survey sent out 

  • Narrowed down list of themes to 5 to vote on 
  • Confirmed participation from each team and interest/commitment to sabotage

November 24, 2024: Mega-team Zoom Call 

  • Finalized Theme
  • Set up Committees and collaboration structures