I've played that game

It never really clicked with me till the wheels left the ground that if we're taking off in winter, that also means we'll be flying over the city in winter. You could make out roads and houses as little marks poking through the fresh dusting of snow. In a matter of maybe one or two minutes we left from the airport, passed my apartment, passed my mom's house, then got too high up to even see the ground below us through the snow. It really puts the speed of these things into perspective.

My window is pointing away from the sun but my view of the clouds is clear. The top of this weather system is perfectly flat and the plane is flying not far above the surface. It looks like staring out across the frozen lake in the winter, wisps of clouds pretending to be blowing snow and the horizon on a clear day splitting the world clean in two.

As we left the airport, we taxied to a deicing station, which I didn't even know existed. Our plane stopped in a big flat open area where it was to be sprayed down. These two tanker trucks pulled up with big arms poking out of the top. At the end of each arm was a an enclosed cockpit-like cabin containing one worker. Attached to the front of this cabin was a pressurized spray nozzle. Each of the arm, the cockpit, and the nozzle could be controlled by the guy inside who moved his machine around robotically and skillfully.

That guy's job is startlingly similar to a whole bunch of video games that I've played. Except this time, rather than shooting robots or space ships, he was spraying the wings of an airplane with ethylene glycol and water. He looked like he was having fun.

The clouds are breaking below me and I can see patches of snow cover. I wonder how far we are? I'm sure all of Manitoba is covered in snow, but most of what seems to be the canadian shield below me is exposed ground. Even the bodies of water are frozen but have virtually no snow on them. You can see the patterns of how they were blown by the wind as they solidified.