Persistent USB with colinux support

I love crunchbang but I am stuck with Windows at work, boo.  I can run colinux off of a usb drive.  I would love to set up a usb drive that can run colinux and also boot.  Is Statler using live-helper to create the images?  I have found http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Colinux but it isn't very clear what is going one there however it does give some insight.  Does anyone have any experience with colinux that could offer some help?  Are the config files for building Statler images available?  Should I start with colinux and work towards crunchbang or start with crunchbang and work towards colinux?  I believe colinux uses a custom kernel so perhaps I should start there.  I could start with a basic debian colinux image and then add the crunchbang sources and then update and upgrade but then how do I make the usb bootable for the images?  Any advice and or links toward this end would be greatly appreciated?