P.P.S. As I was saying about compressing the site down to one page ... the real reason why I was having to do this contortion with redirect is because I HAVEN'T compressed the site down to one page. It's actually more like 2 or 3 pages. When I have a little more time, I will compress it down to 1 and then see how it changes things.
@Jonathan -- yes the whole ajax business is headache inducing. Much like quantum physics. But after awhile, the old way of thinking (Newtonian viewpoint in the case of physics, or static pages in the case of web stuff) just seems so limited, and frankly, in the case of physics, insane. Said differently, just as Newtonian physics (classical mechanics) is a limiting case of quantum physics, static pages is a limiting case of ajax.