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Difficulty getting them out of gear if they were in gear when you switched off is quite common, and rocking the bike is the usual procedure. Most bikes will start in gear if you have the brakes on well enough to make the brake light go. It doesn't actually need the brake light, it just needs the brake light circuit to be energised to bypass the neutral safety feature.

Yeah, the fading light sounds like a dud battery but if bridging the solenoid cranks the bike over then it must not be the case.. In that case it's probably a bad connection somewhere. You could try turning the headlight on to see if that fades as well. Not sure what that would tell us at the moment without looking in the book but it would be a simple check of the battery. I think I'd check the ignition switch as my first check. The recommended thing to do is what's known as a "voltage drop check". In the case of the switch you put a volt gauge across the power wires on the key switch and with the key off it should show 12v, then turn the key on and the voltage should drop to zero as the power goes through the switch instead of the gauge. If it keeps showing a voltage with the key on then there's a bad contact in the switch. Some models have the 12v going through the cdi and then the kill switch on the way to the start button so you should do the voltage drop test across those two parts as well. Switches are a suspect here.. If not a switch, then a bad contact where a terminal connects to a switch or component, or where a wire crimps into the metal terminal on it's end.

You'd already know the obvious ones.. fast idle or binding between front and rear.. Does it do it if you haven't moved the bike ? Like if you just slip it in and then try to take it out again does it do it ?