I'm 6K short of renewing Gold myself. I have been looking at LGA-IAH-SJC-IAH-LGA next Tuesday. It was $228 all in last night. 14 hours on a plane in 1 day, first flight at 5:50 AM. Yuck. I haven't been able to convince my wife to let me do it even though it makes sense just for the extra 25K miles when flying 50K/year.

The problem is I haven't been able to use the companion upgrade with Gold on her this year since we typically go international. I'm sure she would change her mind otherwise!