That's some great encounters !

Yeah, I think it's important to just take a moment and enjoy where you are. We arrived at the periphery of Utrecht by truck (trucks can't go into the city), so we were some kilometers away from the finish line of our first destination.

We were near a match of field hockey and we posed to just relax and enjoy. It was funny, because the crowd (18 years old) had big buckets of beer (3 liters) and we don't have that in France near playing fields. So we just posed, taked a beer, watch the match, and it finished 10-15 minutes after we arrived -- we were pretty lucky because then we found a player which was going home, directly to the heart of Utrecht, at the finish line of our race.

There are some great tips here : http://hitchwiki.org/en/Top_Tips

Basically, we found that having a sign isn't really necessary, because most people will not stop if they don't go to the city, even if they can help you by taking you for some period of time in the right direction.

Most important :

(1) Good spot : that means the car/truck can stop with safety and without interfering with traffic. The best spots are gas station on the highway, because people are going your way (generally) and if there is place in their car, it's extremely difficult to say no if you are a logical person.

(2) Eye Contact/Speaking : I read on your blog you were shy of maintaining eye contact. I'm more an introvert than an extrovert person, but in the context of the race, we had to find a car, and the best way was really to just knock on cars to speak with them and to explain the situation. If you can speak to the person, I would say there is a 50/50 probability it's going to be good if they are going your way. It's harder to say no when you speak to them than when you just have your thumbs up.