Dramatic maybe, but I've seen it happen. My old office had two guys who would compete to see who could type the quietest keyboard. It got so tense you could hear a pin drop. They both bought these weird mushy rubber keypads. The boss finally told them to knock it off because the silence was creepier than the noise.

A trophy shaped like a golf ball is a perfect prize for that.

Cheap tools that stop you from cutting corners.

Hitting 200 briskets is a wild number... I got that same spooked feeling when I realized I'd gone through a whole pallet of charcoal last summer.

Look, it's a book, not a peace treaty. People get way too heated about fictional endings. The whole point is that life often just fades to gray, not some big courtroom scene. Richard is broken and alone in the snow. That's the punishment. What more do you want, a moral written on the page? The quiet ending fits the story.