You are listening to the A Normo Cast.

Ladies and gentlemen, the stages of climbing shoe obsession.

One opens wearing some smelly rentals

or your bros castoffs, but who cares because all you can do is dig in your

fingernails for dear life and wonder just how many pull-ups it's going to take to get

to the top. Then you purchase your first pair sold to you by a store clerk who's been climbing exactly two weeks longer than you have.

Tighter, he keeps repeating, until tears blow your eyes.

But then it's time to refine, and you watch and wonder why that skinny mangy dude climbs so much harder than you do.

Must be the shoes.

But then the girl who checks people in at the gym

climbs a problem you're working on and a pair of flats while she's waiting

for her date.

Your conclusion, shoes don't matter.

But they do matter, so soon you're building a quiver.

You got your edging shoes, you got your off-wish shoes, you got your

crack shoes, thin-crack shoes, steep climbing shoes, all-day shoes. You've got three

pairs of the same shoe and you don't even know why. Which brings us to the final stage. You're down to a couple pairs of

tried and true lovelies that will need to be pride from your cold dead hands

when you send that last great project in the sky. And here's the thing. The Norma cast sponsor Las Portiva has

shoes for every stage of your increasingly gnarly and unattractive climbing feet. So go to

Las Portiva.com or your nearest climbing retailer

to luxuriate and fine Italian craftsmanship

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