Navigation Issue with Durandal

Navigation Issue with Durandal

I'm using the hot towel template, and I'm trying to understand how to
navigate to a different view via a javascript call. When my page loads, it
looks like this:

Then, if I click any other button, then click the apps button again, I
wrote some test code to just take the user to the ping page. This is in
the apps view model:
function activate() {
if (initialized) { router.navigateTo("#/ping"); return; }
// more code here (doesn't get hit the second time through)
}
But what happens is the URL is correctly the ping URL, and the ping button
is selected, but the actual content is still showing the applications:

If I want to navigate to another page without clicking in the navbar at
the top, how should that be done?