The best thing you can do right now: search out local teams in your area. Use:
http://www3.usfirst.org/whats-going-on
With that, you can find some of your nearest teams and try to get in touch with them. Ask if they are meeting during the fall, and if they are ask if your team could attend a couple of meetings to get an idea of whats going on. Many, many teams out there will jump at the chance to have you come over. They'll take the time to introduce you to all the parts, show you how things get hooked up, and help you get up to speed. If asked by a local team, my team would also box up enough miscellaneous control system parts and motors to build a drivable robot (seriously, it would take us about 5 minutes to pull everything off the shelves and stick it in a box). The benefit of having this relationship will continue on throughout the season - you can go to them for help during the season, maybe use their space/tools a couple of times, and they'll be hugely helpful at your competition.
We've done all of this for local teams before - we have teams in our space all the time (in fact, I'm at a team meeting right now with another team present), we help them out at competition, and we focus on training other teams as much as they want (part of the reason we were chosen to alpha test the new control system).
The best thing you can do is find a local team to mentor you through your first season.