I had a dial-up, and never had a problem with 50-post pages, unless people wrote a LOT. I think it's psychological: pages of 50 posts may seem huge, IF you know it's a page of 50 out of a 500 post thread. Separate threads still have the cumulative total that only one thread would have, but may just feel smaller. Anyway, I'll leave it alone as I'm off-topic, and I'd bet that bothers more people than thread size.

It's a bit weird, but when I look at photos of your yurt, I can almost smell the wood. I suppose that wears off after a while, like the new car smell, but it must be very refreshing while it lasts.