You don't have to use your tripod with fully extended legs. A lot of times I don't. Here is a photo of 2 of my tripods. You can see that I marked one of the tripod's legs (all of the legs of the one tripod) to add in setting it up at different heights.

 

I can imagine an understand a reluctance in others to alter something like an EQ mount that they may consider to be permanently and/or properly set up and zeroed in. I myself do not have this luxury. I have to set up and then take down for every viewing session so altering leg length should not add much more to my work load.

 

I took a can of spray paint out to the sidewalk where I usually set up to mark a celestial north south line and found out that the crack in the center of the double sidewalk points exact to celestial north and it's a nice long sidewalk.