French Roll

Misadventures in Love, Life, and Roller Skating Across the French Riviera

By: J Michael Jarvis

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In 1981, a nineteen-year-old American roller skated more than 800 miles across France—alone.
No GPS. No phone. Two ski poles, one backpack, and an engagement ring.

French Roll is the true story of an outrageous solo journey, skated every beach of the French Riviera, during a gap year between high school and college—and how far confidence can carry you before it starts to collect interest.

After working a dangerous job living atop Germany’s highest mountain, Michael receives a letter from his girlfriend asking him to meet her in Barcelona. His plan is audacious and impractical: cross the French Riviera on roller skates. Navigating with paper maps, carrying everything he owns on his back, fueled by teenage hubris and testosterone, his first day brings him mere inches from death.

What follows is not a romanticized travel fantasy, but an honest—and often hysterical—account of endurance travel before GPS and cell phones. Jarvis dodges tour buses and sports cars screaming down steep mountain roads, sleeps on lighthouses to avoid police, skates through golf-ball-sized blisters, confronts temptation, tests loyalty, and discovers the physical cost of going too far.

Written with wit, clarity, and hard-earned humility, French Roll is the award-winning, bestselling coming-of-age adventure about motion, consequence, and the thin line between confidence and recklessness.