Quote Originally Posted by Zaaku View Post
End Game is supposed to be the climax of your journey up. The culmination of all your efforts and training which are then put to the test against an enemy many times stronger then you've ever faced before. Sure there is plenty of good times to be had at Eng Game and it certainly is a highlight of the game. Yet you seem to want to skip everything in between, which kind of invalidates sharing victory in the end.

It is like you signed up for a camping trip. Joined a bus load of random people and got taken to a wilderness you've never seen before. After setting up camp and getting situated into group of people you chatted with on the bus everyone heads out to the stream with their fly rods to catch some diner! The going is hard at first. The water is kind of cold. A few waders have leaks in them. The bites are not happening the moment the first fly hits the water but they keep at it. When everyone returns to camp for the night with their bounty in tow and begin to fillet and cook their much deserved reward....

Someone comes out from their auto-inflated luxury tent with an MRE and sits down with the group and digs in. That guy gets to experience a nice meal in the company of friends at the end of the day which is a note worthy memory but he cannot share in their banter and earlier discussion of the fishing itself. How Doug fell into the water which a fish tugged at him too hard and that bear that came to look at the group.

Eating may have been the goal at the end but it wasn't the ingestion of fish that those campers will remember. It is the time spent at the river side with good company and a new challenge.
Great analogy, but the dude with the delicious MRE (mmmm need to go sack the military surplus store) will remember the meal and I think that might be all that matters to him.