Multisite by subdirectory and 301 Moved Permanently

In an effort to compartmentalize the issues I’m working through, I’ve started this new thread with the hopes that I can get this resolved.

I’ve got a multisite install of WordPress, by subdirectory, in our document-root directory. Running with Apache/2.2.3 (Debian), mod_python/3.2.10, Python/2.4.4, PHP/5.2.0-8+etch15, mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8 and mysql. Main site has only a default page with the twentyten theme. I have 5 other sites defined, two with the default twentyten theme (no real content), and three using the same custom theme.

The speed of the pages loading is intermittent, taking on average 1 – 3 minutes to load, including wp-admin. I’ve turned on Firebug for Firefox to attempt a look at where we’re going and why. Here are two symptoms I’m seeing.

When going to wp-admin, at the point where the login screen comes up, my url looks like this (a symptom, I believe this is not normal):

https://www.ca-wp.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ca-wp.com%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1

When going to one of the sites, Firebug reports the following:
URL STATUS DOMAIN TIME
GET <homepage> 301 moved permanently ca-wp.com 2.06s
GET <homepage> 200 ok ca-wp.com 1.95s
GET style.css 200 ok ca-wp.com 15ms
GET style-home.css 200 ok ca-wp.com 31ms
.
.
.

8 requests, 103.5 kb total, 4.3s (onload 4.5s)

It is the first two GETS that take an inordinate amount of time.
Headers on the first GET:

<[Code moderated as per the Forum Rules. Please use the pastebin]

Honestly, I can’t remember why the two rewrite rules were commented and replaced with the following two (something I read somewhere on wordpress and gave it a try), but, when I uncomment the two original, and take out the other two, I still have the same results.

Any suggestions? Please let me know what else I can give you.