I think the site is also just slow. I have been coming here for a while now with a 56k dial-up and i often have headroom left; also, for one reason or another, i have to completely restart ppp occasionally after PerlMonks becomes "unreachable" even if other connections are fine.
I've noticed something like this too. If I visit http://www.perlmonks.org, where my cookie doesn't exist, the site loads quickly. However, if I visit http://perlmonks.org, where my cookie does exist, it loads significantly slower.