Well, its not a "good" answer, but if you look at the URL in your browser, the shop talk section would look something like this:
http://www.aws.org/cgi-bin/mwf/board_show.pl?bid=1;pg=141

If you just change that page number (the pg=141) to the page you want to go to, you would get there.  So to get to page 100, I would go to:
http://www.aws.org/cgi-bin/mwf/board_show.pl?bid=1;pg=100

The good thing about this, is that if you bookmark a page number (say you want to start reading the forum from end to end since there's lots of good stuff there), the bookmark will return you to that page (although its contents may have changed a bit as things slide down, when new content and pages are added).

Like I said, its not the best answer.  I'm also new here, and wish that there was an easy way to improve on this, but it doesn't look that way.
This site is using mwForum, which is a very nice software package designed around small discussions, where recent content is the most accessable (i.e. a forum). 
While this site serves that purpose very well for its active users, its large wealth of older content has kind of outgrown that, and is a knowledge-base of sorts.
I think I'll write the guys at mwForum, to see if this can be improved upon.