LarDasse74

You are right - that didn't make any sense... when I was racing in the early/mid nineties I was ~200 lbs and never met an axle I coudn't bend.. Now I am 270 lbs and I don't even bother trying freewheel wheels, especially the 7-8-9 speed ones that have soooo much axle outboard of the bearing.

It is hard to tell from the angle of the bike in the picture, but it seems your saddle is tilted nose-down. This causes your weight to slide forward and creates much more pressure on your hands. I used to ask every person who came in the shop the 'hand pressure' question if their saddle was pointed nose down... and ~90% of them said they did have too much hand pressure while riding. Very often these people were looking to buy gloves because they thought it would help, but the culprit was seat angle, not glove padding.

LesterOfPuppets

Yep, I used to have hand numbness problems when I ran flat-top saddles tilted downward.

Now I run saddles with high backs with no tilt and all is good.

GeoffM

Didn't even realize there were responses here. The hand numbness happens with all of my bike. I thought it was due to holding on too tight, or in colder weather my hands just freezing. I'll try tilting it back, because I've never adjusted any of these bikes. Up and down for the seat for maximum pedaling power. That's it.
I'll be dropping the bike off at the LBS today. Hopefully it'll be ready by the weekend.

mrrabbit 

Tilt the saddle back so that the nose is about 1-2 degrees up. It should be such that when sitting straight up hands-free you feel a very slight tendency to settle to the back of the saddle as opposed to the front.

1. This will actually improve hands-free riding...unlikely on your bike as you mentioned earlier frame damage.
2. Wrists will feel a lot better.

You will be able to ride with a relaxed grip on the bars with finger curved and resting over the brake levers.

=8-)