Brentwood's about a five-hour drive for me, so ... I'm gonna post something here soon on the message board of the local road club to ask for help - there's a guy at work who is a road racing veteran, but he's been really sick lately, unfortunately, and in no condition to be bugged. I'd bet someone there would be happy to help give me some lessons.

I took the plunge and ordered the Zinn book from Amazon. It seems like every piece of feedback, good and bad, talked about how the book was geared for the beginner, and I figured "that's me!" I checked out the bike maintenance thread, too, and my expectations seem to be in line with what other people are doing for maintenance in that thread. I basically just wanna keep everything cleaned/lubed and keep the wheels reasonably trued, then move on from there. I may "graduate" to the Park Tools book at some point, but I wanted a good starting point.

Speaking of truing, another question or two, if you don't mind:

I've recently put some weight back on - when I first got the bike, I was hovering around the 220 range, now I'm at the 245 range - my weight shouldn't be giving me the problems I'm having with my back tire, should it? There's heavier people than me riding bikes. I need to drop some of the weight because I can feel a difference in my riding, but that shouldn't be causing me too many bike issues, should it?

And do any of you just have one bike for both your commuting and whatever "recreational riding" you want to do? I like getting out sometimes on the weekend and riding an hour or two on the bike - I'm not doing 100-mile tours or anything like that, but it is more mileage. I'll go somewhere fairly far away just to see if I can bike there. I'm wondering if I should get a good used road bike for those kind of rides, but I really like being able to bike with my back straight on my Schwinn - that "hunched over" feeling that comes with other bikes is no fun at all.