Glad to see that you're back up and running. I agree with Viper007Bond, either of the caching plugins would have helped tremendously. They both so the same thing as you did with the static HTML file, and both are dead simple to use.

Neither of them require code ninja, skills, if you can do the static HTML trick, you can get either of the plugins running.

I've also used both of the plugins and think WPSuperCache is easier to configure, but W3 is more powerful.

I've been seeing a lot of trackback spam of late as well. I might have to resort to disabling them as well if they get bad.