Cycle question (in terms of interacting with Wordpress and jQuery)

Cycle question (in terms of interacting with Wordpress and jQuery)

Hello,

Cycle is awesome! 

I'm having a technical problem with Cycle/jQuery.  I think it is because there are existing jQuery related files within WordPress which are destructively interacting with the standard Cycle/jQuery files I am trying to us.  The problem is this:

If I try to do a Cycle slideshow on my Wordpress site, there is a blank time space between each slide transition.  So it will be like this:
show picture #1
five seconds of blank time where nothing is on the screen
show picture #2
five seconds of blank time where there is nothing on the screen
show picture #3
five seconds of blank time where there is nothing on the screen

Ironically, at the end of the picture loop there is no time gap when it goes back to first picture in the rotation.  So if there were five pictures, the only time it works properly without a blank time gap is when it goes from picture 5 back to picture 1.

The transitions work in the intended Cycle kind of way.  So if it is set to 'fade' the pictures *do* fade in and out.  If it is set to 'slideleft' the pictures do slide in from the left.  But *in-between* these transitions is a void where no pictures show.  Like boring deadspace where the audience would be wondering why there is no movie on the movie screen.

I know my code is working in its most elemental form.  When I test it on a plain html page on my local machine, everything works perfectly.

I examined the Wordpress construction files, and I discovered a ton of jquery related javascript files in the Wordpress code.  This is for Wordpress 3.1.x.
The file path is this:
wp-includes>>js>>jquery

And there are (amazingly to me) all of these files in the above folder:
jquery.color.dev.js
jquery.color.js
jquery.form.dev.js
jquery.form.js
jquery.hotkeys.dev.js
jquery.hotkeys.js
jquery.js
jquery.query.js
jquery.schedule.js
jquery.serialize-object.js
jquery.table-hotkeys.dev.js
jquery.table-hotkeys.js
suggest.dev.js
suggest.js
ui.button.js
ui.core.js
ui.dialog.js
ui.draggable.js
ui.droppable.js
ui.mouse.js
ui.position.ju
ui.resizable.js
ui.selectable.js
ui.sortable.js
ui.tabs.js
ui.widget.js


I'm getting the feeling that that is a gigantic amount of code voodoo that is trying to interact with my plain-vanilla code. The one that really bugs me is the one that says jquery.js.  This is because I installed the standard jquery file in the root directory with the exact same name: jquery.js.  It's like the Doublemint gum commercial.  Although the files are in a different spot, I get the feeling the webpage is "seeing double" with jquery.js and it's causing stuff to spazz out.


The way *I* am trying to have Cycle and jQuery work is this:  I installed Cycle and jQuery in the root directory of the site.  Then I had these files be an include in the header of each page, like this:


<script type="text/javascript" src="/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/cycle.js"></script>


I have a very narrow use of Wordpress.  I don't use any comments, trackbacks, rss feeds or any fancy stuff like that.  I'm perfectly happy to delete/shut down entire blocks of Wordpress' jQuery files that are harming my attempts to get Cycle to work properly.

Maybe I could delete a file, rename a file, move a file into a different directory, or have the code point to a different file path. 

Any suggestions would be welcome.   Cycle is top-priority.  If other things that Wordpress was trying to do have to get sacrificed, fine.