Elegance on the high seas

Temple couple sails on the Queen Mary 2

World travelers Bob and Linda Bilec took a step back in time to an era of elegance and sophistication on the high seas when they boarded the Queen Mary 2 last October.

They sailed to Southampton, England, to visit their daughter, Jennifer, and her family for the Christmas holidays.

As they stood on the deck of the QM2, they watched the skyline of New York City fade into the background. For Bob, it was the realization of how small Manhattan Island really is, a mere 22.82 square miles of land inhabited by 16.36 million people.

For Linda, it was watching the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island shrink in size as the boat pulled away from New York Harbor. She said she couldn’t help but think of all the people who immigrated to the United Sates on a ship, seeing Lady Liberty for the first time, and hoping for a better life.

The Bilecs are residents of the world. They have traveled and lived all over the globe for pleasure and work. But this was their first transatlantic crossing on an ocean liner. So when Jennifer asked her parents to spend the holidays in England, Bob knew right away that they didn’t want to fly.

“I wanted to take the Queen Mary,” he said. “I wanted the experience of sailing on the boat.”

They started planning for their trip a year in advance, watching fares and looking for the best and most economic time to travel. They even downloaded a schematic of the ship’s decks to find the right mid-ship state room to help mitigate the potential for seasickness.

While Bob wanted a themed crossing, Linda said she looked forward to the elegance of a bygone era of dining and dancing the night away in the ship’s formal restaurant — a stark contrast from the downhill skier and outdoor enthusiast she is.

“I was really excited about the dancing,” Linda said, admitting that she and Bob took private foxtrot and waltz lessons before they sailed.

“I was thinking about ‘Titanic,’ the movie,” Bob said. “I looked at the staircase, the chandelier — it’s all very elegant.”

Their search led them to Road Scholar, a nonprofit organization that offers educational and adventure tours, domestic and abroad, with an intellectual twist for seniors 50 and older. Not only did Road Scholar have a trip planned for Southampton with a murder-mystery theme, and four nights in London, it also included return airfare to Austin for both of them.

The RMS Queen Mary 2 is a transatlantic ocean liner and not a cruise ship so the crowds are not as big (around 4,000 people including staff and passengers). There is a strict set of guidelines, including casual and formal dress codes. On formal nights, men must wear a tuxedo and women must wear a gown or after-five dress.

“If you want to enjoy the experience, get a tuxedo and (for the ladies) a formal dress,” Bob said. “You can pick up deals at thrift stores and discount stores.”

Bob found a designer tuxedo jacket and pants in a thrift store. After adding a white tuxedo shirt, tie and cuff links, he had a tux for under $100. Linda, a former costume designer, picked up a basic black dress at a discount store and embellished it with sequins across the neckline. With a change of accessories and jewelry, she was able to make the dress look different for each of the formal evenings.

“All the women have on a black dress and (they) drip in pearls, every pearl they own. They wear lots of pearls,” Linda said, smiling her smile that never seems to fade.

The passage took seven days and followed the same route as the Titanic, in reverse, when it sailed from Southampton on April 12, 1912, on its way to New York, a destination cut short by a collision with an iceberg.

“I actually looked for icebergs,” Linda said. “There were none.”

The weather cooperated the whole way — sunny skies, calm blue waters and smooth sailing. When it was time to retire for the evening, they chose an inside cabin, above the water line but with no portholes to look out onto the sea.

“We wanted the experience of sailing on the boat,” Bob said. “When you are sleeping, you don’t need an outside window. When you look out the window, all you see is ocean.”

“The views didn’t change for seven days,” Linda added.

Although jet lag is often a problem when flying through time zones, Bob said sailing on the ship wasn’t so hard to deal with because time advances one hour every day. By the time they reached Southampton, they were adjusted to the time change.

“It takes two or three days to recover from jet lag,” Linda added.

Where Canada and America meet

Linda Bilec was born in Colorado, grew up in Michigan, and attended college in Utah, before transferring to Lake Superior State College (now University) in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., on the border of Canada.

An avid downhill skier, during winter Linda spent as much time on the Michigan slopes as she could, either skiing by herself or coaching a high school ski team during her college years.

Sault Ste. Marie was less than 200 miles from the town of White River, Ontario, Canada, where her aunt had a summer vacation trailer park. White River was also Bob’s hometown. He and his twin brother, Michael, are known to be the first set of twins ever born in this small town of about 1,000 people. He also has three older siblings.

“The population hasn’t changed in 40 years,” said Bob, a U.S. citizen since 2009.

White River is also known as the coldest spot in Canada. Bob recalls one morning when he looked out the window of his home and the thermometer read -68 Fahrenheit. Summer temps can reach as high as 75, but the season only lasts four weeks.

Summers in White River were short and recreation was scarce. For fun teens would cruise the parking lots of businesses, listening to their music, looking to see what was going on in their small town where the sun didn’t set until after 10 p.m. One summer evening while Linda and her cousins were working at her aunt’s trailer park, Bob and his friends drove through the lot. Bob was in the back seat. Linda saw the boys in the car and intercepted their fun. “I threw them out of the park. I made them leave,” she said.

While Linda didn’t see Bob tucked away in the back, he saw her.

The next day Linda took a break from work to walk over to the service station where her car was towed after it ran out of oil. Bob was up on a scaffold at the service station painting a sign that read, “White River, the Coldest Spot in Canada.” Linda didn’t notice Bob, but he noticed her as soon as she walked by. He remembered her from the trailer park. Calling down to her he asked, “Hey, do you want to go to a party?”

She looked up and said, “Yes.” Later that evening, Bob walked over to her aunt’s house to pick her up for their date. They walked back to his family’s home for the party, but his parents were not there and as it turned out, the party was intended just for two. His parents returned home, interrupting their first date, but that didn’t stop the young couple from spending time together that summer.