Lenny's right,
On a 56k modem it took well over 18 seconds for the page to even come up.
As Lenny said:
Add height, width and ALT attributes to your IMG tag so that the page text loads before the graphics.
Without the height, width and ALT attributes, the browser will actually download the picture first, then the text. When you place the height, width and ALT attributes in the IMG tag, the browser will actually download the text first, then the picture, allowing visitors to start reading text at the earliest possible point.
Look a my site and see how easy it loads, lots of content, simple graphics, but it loads exceptionally fast...
Hope this helps...
Mike