Earlier this year I was staying in a (shudder) campground in Avignon when a fellow bike traveller came over as I was pitching camp. He was obviously insane, but seemed harmless enough. At one point in the night he babbled that he liked my front pannniers (?) I chalked this up to his obvious insanity, and went to sleep. I woke up at about 3am to run to the toilet and noticed that the man was gone, along with my two front panniers which he had taken from the zipped vestibule in my tent!
The next day I was cycling north through a tiny Provencal village when one of the houses occupants opened his window shutter and invited me in for a beer! With my butchered french and his equally butchered english we had a good lunchtime converstion. As I was leaving, he pointed to my front rack and enquired where my panniers were. When I told him what happened he apologized profusely for his countryman and gave me a brand new set of panniers from his tool shed!!
His name was Jean-Noel, a real road angel!
-pic from outside his house-