Thanks for all your insight, it looks like I will just have to give them a call (something I was trying to avoid).

And in regards to what I read... basically all the fine print to the mileage charts in the pdf docs, all the relevant threads on ft and most blogs I could find. A United CSR also told me a while back that award tickets basically have the same rules for stopovers, routing etc. as the regularly available lowest fare tickets for the same day (huh?), and while that sounds strange I still made sure to read all of those too, just in case.