[X-Unix] Beginner Questions: alias for SSH tunnel

[dm87 at proparallax.com]

First, if my questions are too simple or basic for this list, I would 
be very grateful for suggestions as to where I might appropriately 
ask such simple questions.

I have known nothing of shells until today.  I find that my system 
(OSX 10.2.9) is using bash.  I gather that OSX jaguar was tcsh and 
panther if bash.

What I am trying to accomplish the creation of an alias to open the 
SSH tunnel in terminal.  I can type in the command, it works very 
well, but it is time consuming to type in and I usually make a lot of 
mistakes.  I thought it would be a good thing to create an alias.

I followed the instructions on this site: 
http://www.aas.duke.edu/comp/mac/dreamweaver/dwmxtunnelosx.html and 
ran into a few difficulties with files asking me something about 
buffers.  I may have messed up my files, but things seem to be 
working still.

My .bashrc and .bash_profile files have now been edited several 
times, and contain only commands I have typed in.  They were blank 
when I opened them, so I assume that I can delete what I have added 
and all will be well.

So, I have put this line of code in both .bashrc and .bash_profile:

	alias ftpME="sudo ssh -L 5000:www.mydomain.com:21 
username at www.mydomain.com

When I type in ftpME at the terminal prompt, I get the error message:

	-bash: ftpME: command not found

What am I doing wrong?  What file should contain the alias code?

Thanks
Donna dm87