[ubuntu] Can boot from usb on macbook

Hey everyone,

So I have an old 1st gen macbook that I have ubuntu 11.10 on. To make matters worse, I haven't touched this laptop in over a year and I don't remember my user password. However, I want to blow the old install away and reinstall a fresh copy of 12.

I have a usb stick which has been flashed and ready to boot from/install.

However, when I boot the macbook holding the alt(option) key, I'm only presented with the option to boot to the "Windows"(ubuntu) hard drive.

I tried clicking on that and tried every key combination while ubuntu boots, but nothing seems to work. I don't even get a grub menu before ubuntu finally boots to the home screen so i can't alter the boot order either.

I'm willing to try just about anything at this point.

thanks