Progress on cycling - "Just like riding a bike" false for this adult

It's been roughly two weeks since I learned how to ride a bike and bought my bike.

I've been practicing riding my bike almost every day.  I found a nice training area near my house, which includes a park.  I first tried to ride my bike on the grass in the park, but I had to relearn how to balance myself on the bike again.  There is an American saying "Just like riding a bike" which implies that the skill of riding a bike is never forgotten, once learned.  This is not true for me.  Every single day I take my bike out, I have to learn all over again how to balance and how to start pedaling without losing my balance.  However, the time to relearn how to pedal while maintaining balance gets a little shorter with each practice session.

There are multiple skills I need to develop before I will be ready to use my bike for grocery shopping or riding the wonderful bike trails in my ares:

• Descend  hills and other declines under control (proper braking, body positioning, no fear)
• Sharing the road with cars - resisting the urge to duck to the right and thus confuse drivers.
• Turning, especially if I have to bike on a sidewalk.  Curb ramps are often on the corners of sidewalks.
• Bike on sidewalks when the road has aggressive drivers - no swerving.
• Proper signaling.
• Biking on the bike lane without swerving - absolutely necessary to avoid unwanted contact with cars, pedestrians, cyclists, etc.

I'm getting better at using my front brake to control my descent - basically tapping with the front brake lever instead of just holding it down - but I still have to make sure I don't hold down the front brake lever with a death grip.  I've only had one car/van follow me while I'm biking, but I need to resist the urge to pull off the road and let the car/van pass, because that would be "weaving" which would make my behavior unpredictable to the driver.

As for turning, I still need a warmup of at least 10 minutes because I have a tendency to lose control of my balance on turns before my mind and head are warmed up.

The sidewalks in my neighborhood are noticeably narrower than the streets and the narrowness messes with my head.  I continue to struggle to stay within the width of the sidewalk and not swerve off of it.  But today I did a better job than before staying on a sidewalk.  Ideally I shouldn't have to bike on a sidewalk but some streets have traffic with aggressive drivers - I feel safer being on the sidewalk.

Signaling continues to be difficult due to losing balance when I remove a hand from the handlebar to signal.  It's hard enough just to turn my head to see if there's anybody I should be signaling to.

If weather permits, I'm going to try biking to the park where WABA's "how to ride" and "City Cycling" classes are taught.  It'll be a challenge because I'll have to descend a steep hill, then bike on the sidewalk part of the way, then cross a huge intersection with lots of cars around to get to the bike trail leading to that park.