I was trolling the frequent flyer blogs to see what the common wisdom was for achieving status. I found lots of folks who declare buying miles as overpriced, and it lead me to check into low cost first class domestic travel. Flying first delivers double the premiere qualifying miles. So I found a deal on a flight from Chicago to SFO to Seattle back to Chicago. My flight to nowhere will get me just above the 100k mile mark on Dec 29. Happy New Year.