The first year you bring a team to barbecue fest, you quickly learn the extent of your partying abilities. Sure, you might be able to put away some beer, put up with loud music music, stay up late, leer at women.

But can you and your buddies build a two-story party pavillion, complete with bar, carpeting, mood lighting, stereo equipment and an incredible view of the sunset over the river?

This is where the Ques Brothers are master partiers, if I do say so myself.

On Saturday, a small group of us went down to Tom Lee Park to puzzle out the huge pile of scaffolding and plywood left by the folks we rented it from. Personally, it’s been a long time since I’ve done any hard labor.

(When I told my mother about this, she replied, “Son, you’ve NEVER done hard labor!” to which I replied that I used to assemble scaffolding for Shakespeare in the Park performances back home, to which she quipped something about “Love’s Labors Lost.”)

At any rate, here’s how it looked around noon or so.

Now, you’ll notice the team next to ours already had their two story-castle erected before we’d barely leveled off our party pavilion. This is because they HIRED PEOPLE to do it. It turns out that even with a $17,000 budget, we could not just contract people to do things for us. And why would we? We have Danny, who builds factories for a living. We have Steve who is a homebuilder. We have Chad who goes to the gym. It’s not just good cooks that make a barbecue team successful — it’s a well-rounded, variously skilled group of people who have lots of time, energy and money.

As team member Mikey put it: “You know, we may have started out as just a group of people who are used to hanging out in bars together, drinking together, shootin’ the s*** together, but what we’ve discovered is that we also work really well together.”

As the sun got higher, we made slow progress. Beer arrived. Progress continued at the same pace.

This is me and Win Bonner, looking at the amazing architecture that seemed to be going up in front of our eyes.

By Sunday afternoon, a bunch of our team members (I had been too sore to get up the next morning) had finished the scaffolding, and had started the dance floor/dining area in the rear. The sheer amount of work that went into cutting the plywood, building the platforms, tacking the carpeting, is nothing to be sneezed at. Most barbecue teams don’t dream so big, and I can completely understand why. It’s hard work for a first time team.

Our team leader, Chuck, is thinking in terms of a 10-year-plan, so we’re considering the heavy labor an “investment” in our barbecue future.