When trying to teach yourself to fly on an electric plane, crashing is just part of the learning process.

Your Slo-V would actually be a very good starter plane, darticus. It's designed to fly more slowly than the Phantom and it's manuverable enough that it can be flown inside of a gymnasium. If you fly the Slo-V outside, however, you will need to fly in very calm conditions.

There is an AMA chartered flying club listed for your home town of Sparta, NJ called the Garden State Circle Burners. While the club is specifically dedicated to control line flying, I'd be surprised if there weren't a few R/C pilots in the club who'd be happy to help you out:

http://www.gscb.us/

Try contacting the club and finding a flight instructor who could give you a hand. I actually started out a few years ago with an Aerobird Challenger, and my experience was simlar to yours. I spent a lot of time bouncing it off of trees and soccer fields, but I didn't have much luck flying it. I found a flying club and took flight training on their club glow trainers, and once I learned how to fly glow planes I found I could fly my aerobird much better as well.