[Mesh] Introducing myself and what I might be able to do

Hi, I just joined the list and have been exploring the relevant web pages. I'm excited to get involved -- I first encountered the idea of community mesh networks at the early meetings of Personal Telco in Portland when 802.11b was just starting to become widespread, and have been hoping to have a chance to participate in something like this ever since. I'm at 32nd and Adeline (node "phorzaith"), and from consulting the node map I think I may have decent line of sight to tunabanana and TSA, a little more than half a kilometer down Adeline St. and across the street; and maybe even Hearth. (woody and OMI are also close, but I think line of sight would be difficult.) I have a first floor apartment, which isn't ideal, but I might be able to work with neighbors upstairs or a couple doors down to get better antenna position. I have questions about mounting a router vs. just mounting the antenna -- anything in my front yard and positioned to reach that far down the street would, I think, be at risk of theft. I'd be happy to donate a portion of my Internet bandwidth, provided that I have the ability to turn it off temporarily on occasion -- my DSL connection maxes out at about 3Mbps down and 1Mbps up. I'm going to try to attend the meetup tomorrow. Unfortunately Thursday nights are bad for me, so I can't usually do in person stuff. If anybody has specific stuff to point me toward to read or think about before the meetup, please do! Pete