I think I found your answer here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298408/EN-US. When you leave out the trailing slash and IIS finds a directory that matches your request, it performs a redirect for you. I believe this is where your redirect is coming from, thereby sending you to /static/inauguralball/. Notice that IIS has also added the trailing slash for you because it detected that directory exists.
Can you make sure that your hrefs always point to /inauguralball/ (with the trailing slash) so that IIS doesn't perform that automatic redirect for you?