I'm in a similar situation, but, ds2 being the second child I've 'extended' bfd, I have a slightly different perspective on it: I know that "this, too, will pass". That's the mantra of parenting, after all!
TBH I don't see why you should cut down on the feeds. If it works for you, then whatever your feeding regimen is , it's fine. When it's convenient ds gets so many feeds in a day that I lose count. OTOH, if we have a busy day, or I'm away from him, then we may only have 3 feeds. He's not bothered, neither am I.
He's begining to come out of the athletic feeding, unless I feed near a table, in which case he seems to believe that he can only feed if he's either drumming his feet on the table, or grabbing randomly at anything on the table. I find that the modesty issue when feeding can be dealt with by wearing a stretch top (eg T-shirt) and pulling the whole thing over him. Otherwise he tends to yank my top up and down.
If I don't want, for whatever reason, to feed him at any particular moment, then the best thing to do is to distract him. As another poster mentioned, nibbles such as raisins are a tolerable subsitute. Also wearing many layers - undoing all the zips becomes a distracting entertainment. Just make sure the bottom layer doesn't have a zip as well!
I don't think keeping going now will necessarily make it harder to wean later. I weaned dd off some of the middle of the day feeds (because it was right for her at the time) at about 19m, but she self-weaned the rest when she chose. The whole process was surprisingly easy, given how keen she was on bfing.
Please don't let other peoples' prejudices influence you on a very personal decision, because it really doesn't sound to me that you are ready to wean. (Though if you do decide to wean, please don't let the extended bfer's opinions upset you, either!)