Some background first
My dad taught me to ride on an 1979 Honda CX500 when I was about 15 or 16 (below legal driving age in the UK) on a private road. He made me do figure of eights, starts, stops, hill starts and so on. When you're a skinny teenager (yes, I was skinny once), doing low speed figure of eights on a bike that weighed well over 200kg was something that required a fair amount of concentration and balance. Other than riding one of his later bikes (an FJ1200) round a car-park once a couple of years later, I didn't jump on a bike again until I was 29.
However, in the intervening years, I did spend a fair amount of time with four wheels. I've owned a number of reasonable sports cars and done a reasonable amount of kart and saloon car racing. In 15 years of motoring, up until my diesel-soaked roundabout-induced off a couple of weeks ago, I'd never had an accident that didn't involve someone running into the back of me.
When I decided to buy a bike three years ago, I went and booked the basic handling test. That was my first moment on a bike since I was a teenager. I took a couple of minutes (literally) to reacquaint myself with the controls and took the test; and passed. I bought my XR250ES a couple of days later. Picked it up from the dealership, then rode it home. In strong winds. And rain. Over the harbour bridge. At rush hour.
When I got my bike, I just rode it. I didn't practice anything; I just got on it and rode to wherever I needed to go. I did this in all weathers and all conditions and simply didn't think about it. I suppose I've always been blessed with fairly good control of two wheeled objects (competive downhill mountain-biking when I was younger) and a general affinity for motorised transport. However, learning to ride is not just learning how to control a bike - it's two-wheeled road-sense as well. You can't really practice that. You have to develop it and pick it up and the only way is through real-world experience.
All of this gets me onto my point: is it really necessary to intentionally go out and practice certain things on the road? Or is it just better to jump on the bike and ride the damn thing; go out and ride to where you need to go.
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