Indurain, interested to hear about the rest of your trip. I was in 9E, a center seat, in between 2 big guys. None of us were too happy. What was interesting, was that the flight next door to us, was leaving at 4:30 PM (my parents were on that one) on the way to Chicago. When we came back to the gate for refueling, I noticed their plane was gone, which means they must have made it before the clearance restriction went into place! We must have missed the clearance by just a few minutes!
This was good for them though, because they were scheduled to arrive in SJO almost 3 hours after myself. Its about the same flying time, so my thought is, best NOT to fly through Chicago!