This Guy Is Blogging the Seven-Week Ordeal That Is Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Pass

Matt Pershe is an AmeriCorps volunteer, a recent Penn alum, and a guy who scored one of Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Passes, which entitle their holders to a seven-week binge on unlimited pasta, soup, salad, and breadsticks. And luckily for us, he's documenting the whole thing on Tumblr.

"There’s a guy named Carl who is forming a Twitter community of people nationwide who possess a Pasta Pass. I’m somewhat embarrassed to be part of it."Pershe makes it clear from the outset that he's not a particular fan of Olive Garden, rather describing his motivations as practical — he can't really make ends meet on his AmeriCorps stipend, so he made the investment with the intent to live off the restaurant's food as much as possible. He's been taking most of his meals to go and stretching them into multiple meals at home.

So far, Pershe writes that he's on a first-name basis with the manager at the Olive Garden at Chestnut and Broad, and has smoothed out some initial problems with the pass. (The card didn't work on his first visit, and one employee who hadn't yet encountered one of the passes didn't realize the deal could be applied to takeout.)

By day three, Pershe was already expressing tremendous relief about being faced with an opportunity to eat a burger at a party. By day four, melodrama has set in: "Four days into this experience, I’ve pushed off far enough from the dock to simultaneously feel confident in my ability to stay afloat and scared that I won’t be returning to the dock for a long time."

There's no telling where Pershe may find himself by day 49.