Ok so I have been following these how-to's to the t, perhaps i am forgetting something.
dmesg look slike this when I plug in the zaurus:
usb 1-2.2: new full speed USB device using address 13
usb0: register usbnet at usb-0000:00:02.0-2.2, Sharp Zaurus SL-5x00
ok, so its picking it up, then i run ifconfig:
ifconfig usb0 192.168.129.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 36:A3:3B:A7:C8:E4
          inet addr:192.168.129.1  Bcast:192.168.129.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::34a3:3bff:fea7:c8e4/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1098 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1392 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:144629 (141.2 KiB)  TX bytes:132297 (129.1 KiB)
great, so i can ssh into the zaurus no problem, and i can ping my desktop (192.168.2.101) no  problem from the zaurus
So I am guessing it must have somethign to do with the masquearading / gateway.
here are the routing tables for the zaurus:
root@collie:~# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.129.1   *               255.255.255.255 UH    0      0        0 usbd0
192.168.129.0   *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 usbd0
default         192.168.129.1   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 usbd0
the default gateway takes like 10 seconds before it shows up, /etc/resolv.conf is set for the router, same as my desktop (192.168.2.1 the router)
I cant ping ip's or hostnames though from the zaurus, it just times out, nor can i ping the ip of the router.
anyone have any suggesstions / things I can try?