Elitists R Us

One aftereffect of my Big Adventure this summer -- along with my obsession with using chopsticks -- arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. Seems my trans-Pacific flights had piqued the interest of Northwest Airlines' frequent-flier gods, who bumped me up to Silver Elite status.

My membership in frequent-flier clubs has always been a bit of a reach -- I don't fly that often, and most of my Northwest miles came from a promotion cooked up by marketing execs on a coke bender, wherein you could get 40,000 miles if you switched your long distance plan to Sprint. (Shortly after I signed up, the promotion came to the attention of sober officials at Northwest, who promptly ended it, because who gives out that kind of miles?) But since there are no sporadic-flier clubs, I do the FF thing. (Technically, due to some courtesy title confusion, my mom does the FF thing. But I digress.)

So it came about that I'm spending a sunny but cold Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis, sipping premium tea and noshing snickerdoodles in front of a fireplace, nestled into a leather chair chronicling my adventures in high society courtesy of free Wi-Fi. Yes, I have gained access to the WorldClubs lounge. No longer must I walk past these frosted-glass doors with their "Members Only" signs and wonder how the other half lives. I'm living it.

(I was going to write "in front of a roaring fire," until I realized that a: that's a tired cliche, and b: it's not roaring at all. It's either a gas fire enclosed in what looks like a flat-panel TV screen, or it's a flat-panel TV screen showing an endless video loop of a fire.)

And I got bumped to first class for my flight to Rapid City.

Oh, but there's always a catch, and here it is: my Silver Elite status -- the preboarding privileges, the free upgrades to first class, the lounge access -- is only good until February, unless I make two more flights before the end of the year.

Denver for Thanksgiving will be one. The other? I don't care. I'll fly anywhere. I'll fly to Baltimore, for pete's sake, and take MARC back home. (According to DCist, United at one time really did operate a scheduled flight between D.C. and Baltimore. Why on earth anyone would spend an hour in a security line instead of driving 35 miles is a mystery. Maybe they were trying to get elite qualifying segments.)

All I know is, I MUST figure out how to keep my Silver Elite card. I'm never going back!