No worries.
I have been doing more experimentation today... It appears the pause only happens when sending to the serial monitor.
When I remove that from the equation, the data stream is indeed constant from one esp32 to the other.

I am working with esp-now. I simply want a nonstop continuous stream of bytes being transferred from one esp32 to another. For my test, I am trying to send a 1 and then a 0, and repeating. When I monitor the receiver, it appears to receive these bytes as intended, but then pauses for a moment, then ...