Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven't tried Groovy/Grails, but in my experience several of the other rails knockoffs were the genuine Rolix's of the framework world.
Rails is not perfect, but ruby and leadership by innovators who think a little different made it what it is. Will you see that in me-too frameworks? Will they ever do more than copy ideas and stay a step behind?
Plus, the difference between a dynamic language and java is something like the difference between travelling at light-speed, vs. faster than light. In Java you travel (code) in a straight line. In Rails or a dynamic language, you can fold space-time so the destination point is only a few lines of code from where you are now. Cleverness gives you more leverage in a dynamic language. ROR is solid enough, and Jruby can run rails now.
My first suggestion is to take a course in a programming langauge at a local college. Learning a language, any language, will start you off faster than struggling with it on your own. C# or VB.NET are non-intimidating and taught everywhere as they're the workhorse languages in many microsoft-based IT shops. They're not cool and hackerish, but have the instant gratification of easy GUI building which is helpful to beginners, and you can avoid memory management which is very intimidating to beginners. They're also taught EVERYWHERE so even in East Chucka, someone will have these courses in some format. Appreciation for the finer things (ruby and dynamic languages) is more clear when you've seen how the other half lives. Also, if you learn one of these languages, you can possibly get a QA or support job to pay for more classes. Lisp, Ruby and and Scheme are cool, but won't pay the bills while you learn.
The next thing I'd suggest is to come up with an idea for something you're passionate about creating, and learn the technologies you need to make it as you go. Having a project you're excited about is the difference between being hungry for a technology and choking it down like a cold piece of liver.
And finally, as the other posts mentioned, get the pragmatic programmers book when you're ready to learn ruby. I'd suggest starting with a Ruby course, but I'm not sure they exist on any wide-scale. Remember though, that book is focused on the framework, not the ruby language. Once you know how to code, you'll be all set.
Rails is not perfect, but ruby and leadership by innovators who think a little different made it what it is. Will you see that in me-too frameworks? Will they ever do more than copy ideas and stay a step behind?
Plus, the difference between a dynamic language and java is something like the difference between travelling at light-speed, vs. faster than light. In Java you travel (code) in a straight line. In Rails or a dynamic language, you can fold space-time so the destination point is only a few lines of code from where you are now. Cleverness gives you more leverage in a dynamic language. ROR is solid enough, and Jruby can run rails now.
Eric