This is my first post on the forums and from what I've been reading, everyone is so helpful and so I'm reaching out to the experts!

I'm new to the world of mileage, medallion status, etc. My head has been spinning this year as I've been trying to figure everything out.

I made FO a couple months ago and experienced upgrades to first class on both legs of my first trip as a Silver Medallion on a ATL-LAX trip. After reading through these forums, I'm realizing that was very lucky for me in that the ATL-LAX leg busy leg for medallions.

I even thought that my Silver status would only be through the end of the year and I would have to qualify again to get it for 2011 so I was planning to sandbag my excess miles to qualify as quickly as possibly in 2011, but just realized the other day reading through these forums that my Silver status is good through Feb 2012! Now I want to get to gold before the end of the year and accumulate as much, if any, additional MQMs above that as possible in that I don't know how much I will be flying in 2011.

With that said, I am 14,000 MQM's away from getting to Gold Status before the end of the year. I am planning a trip to HNL Nov 21 (Sunday) and planning to leave HNL on Thanksgiving, Nov 25 and arrive back in Atlanta on Friday.

Initially I was looking to get a non-stop flight from ATL to HNL on an Airbus 330 with a K class economy and use 30,000 miles to upgrade to Business Elite on both legs. But, I just found out and signed up today for a Promo that gives me 10,000 bonus miles and double MQM's if I fly out of Nashville. So now I'm planning to do that in that it will maximize my miles and I will get more than enough miles to read Gold since I will double my MQM's. I will either drive to or take a shuttle to Nashville to take my flight.

With that said, does anyone else have any strategies that I haven't taken into consideration that will help me maximize the mileage and MQM's on this trip to HNL?

Also, if I want to use miles to upgrade to Business Elite, how do I do that? It seems that there is information on whether upgrade availabilities are available on flights or not, but I don't know how to access it. Or should I just call Delta and have then verify that I can get the upgrade before purchasing the tickets?

Any help in any of the areas that I've talked about would be much appreciated!