Well, it looks like I'm going to finish the year about 2,100 miles away from UA 1K status. (Curse that missed flight from AMS - SFO where I took BA instead!) So I'm trying to figure out the cheapest and fastest way to book 2100 miles. I live in the Bay Area between SJC and SFO. Here's the best I've
found so far:

SFO - PDX - EUG - PDX - SFO on Christmas, depart at ~8AM, return around 3:30PM, $225.

Can anyone do better? I would prefer to fly on Christmas (seems to be the cheapest day), but I might be somewhat flexible, although I can't fly after 12/26.

The problem seems to be that United Shuttle (most of the west coast flights between major cities) doesn't provide a 500-mile minimum. United Express does, so connecting from SFO through a major city to a nearby small town seems to work, as I get 500 miles each way from the stopover to the small town, then
I just need to ensure the stopover is >550 miles from SFO, which basically seems to mean PDX or SEA.

The other option which seems promising is flying back and forth a couple of times between LAX and SAN (which is only about $80 RT, and is United Express so 500 miles each way), but after counting my flight from SFO/SJC to LAX and back it gets more expensive.

Anyone have any ideas? Any specials that I could apply to a single round-trip
to somewhere past DEN that would bring the cost down below $200?