Apache and extra stat64 + lstat64 calls

Hi,

I'm trying to squeeze the last bits of performance out or Apache (httpd
1.3.34), so I'm strace-ing httpd processes to see wht extra work they
are doing. Here is one thing I found - when a request for
"/some/path/here" is made, Apache goes all the way down to "/some"
looking for... I don't know what.

Below is the important strace bit.
Note that /history/(.*) is a pattern from a RewriteRule that rewrites
to /myapp/History.do?.... (myapp is a webapp).
So, the first stat64 call below makes sense, because that's the real
URI, but what about all the rest?

read(6, "GET /history/http://japanese.a"..., 4096) = 283
rt_sigaction(SIGUSR1, {SIG_IGN}, {0x80750e6, [],
SA_RESTORER|SA_INTERRUPT, 0x2448c8}, 8) = 0
time(NULL) = 1166257862
stat64("/www/site/htdocs/myapp/History.do", 0xfef92894) = -1 ENOENT (No
such file or directory)
stat64("/www/site/htdocs/myapp", 0xfef92894) = -1 ENOENT (No such file
or directory)
stat64("/www/site/htdocs", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) =
0
lstat64("/www", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
lstat64("/www/site", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|S_ISGID|0775, st_size=4096, ...})
= 0
lstat64("/www/site/htdocs", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=4096, ...})
= 0
lstat64("/www/site/htdocs/myapp", 0xfef927e4) = -1 ENOENT (No such file
or directory)

I think I followed everything described on
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/misc/perf-tuning.html .

Any help, tips, or pointers would be much appreciated, so I can get rid
of these extra calls.

Thank you!