Thanks for your reply.  I believe though that you can use a selected "group" of servers by using some commands in your torc config file. I talked to a helpful person on their IRC channel and was met with this. I'm pasting it, I think it's pretty clear:

<seeess> chances are you just got a bad server in the chain
<seeess> it's only as fast as the weakest link
<seeess> i'd suggest playing with it for another few days at least before doing this
<angusb> alright
<angusb> so if I do decide to do it, I go into my torrc file?
<seeess> tor is generally pretty good about picking servers, well as good as it can be to go through servers volunteering bandwidth for hundreds of thousands of people
<seeess> yes that is where you put "entrynodes nickname, nickname"
<angusb> and add the line EntryNodes Whistler, ?
<angusb> shouldn't I add the IP in there somewhere
<seeess> no it does the mapping
<seeess> and you'll need strictentrynodes 1
<angusb> so what do I put in the torrc file then?
<seeess> if you desire to never use anything except what you have in entrynodes
<seeess> entrynodes nick1, nick2, nick3, nick4            (as many as you want)
<seeess> strictentrynodes 1