Theme hangs on loading

[JoeS]

Just a quick question to see if anyone else has encountered this problem.

On one of the sites I built for a client (this one uses Lifestyle), the theme appears to "hang" when the page first loads.

I've customized the theme and put in a full-width graphic at the top of the page. It's a .gif file that's under 20k so the graphic is pretty light. This is the point where the "hang" occurs.

I've tried removing the graphic, stripping out all the unused code and even went so far as to change the coding in the "homepageleft" and "homepageright" to be hard-coded instead of using a widget call.

After going through all this, there was a very slight (but noticeable) improvement in the load times. I'm using a broadband connection and the "hang" is relatively minor but still annoying. I can only imagine how it might appear on slower connections (as in really slooowww).

On other sites I've built using Lifestyle the problem hasn't appeared.

Any input or suggestions would be appreciated.

The site is http://rightsradio.com