Memorial Day week-end brings the Cottonwood 200, a three-day bicycle ride that courses through the Flint Hills, past prairie cemeteries and through the small Kansas towns that seem to die a little more each year. Saturday morning, 150 cyclists roll out from Washburn University through the western suburbs of Topeka for the 75-mile trek to Council Grove.

We buzz west on Kansas Highway 4 in a pace line at about 18 mph, one rider following the other, like the professional peloton in the Tour de France, just 15 mph slower. The rolling hills to Dover are a prelude to the leg-busting topography of the Flint Hills. Those who say Kansas is flat don’t know what they don’t know.

We reach Eskridge at 9 a.m. and stop at the IGA market to stoke up on water and food. It’s closed, extinct, the black windows reflecting a block of empty storefronts. Last year the IGA was still feeding the town, the shelves stocked with cans and cookies and cereal and meat, the checkout area a community social club. I don’t know where the Eskridgers shop now. Probably Topeka, a 20-mile drive, food money now plowed into gas money.

Last year, a group of ladies dressed in Sunday finery graced the sidewalk in front of the old cafe next to the IGA handing out red poppies for Memorial Day. They were raising money for veterans who made our history in the past century. This year the cafe is also extinct. A lone lady bearing poppies stands on the other side of the street. I buy one for a dollar and tie the wire stem to my bike.

We ride west out of Eskridge, flashes of poppy red struggling up the series of hills. Kansas is luxuriant, a green sea of grasses and cottonwoods rolling to the edge of the horizon. We fly down the long descent from Lake Wabaunsee to the junction with Kansas Highway 99. Forty miles to go.

The next 10 miles are bucolic, which sounds like a juicy cough rather than the pastoral landscape that could seduce me into settling in rural Kansas. Bucolic comes from the Latin word boucolos, meaning a cow (bous) cultivator (colos), or herdsman. It was first recorded in the English language in 1613. I wonder what herdsmen did in 1613 to keep from getting a sore behind while riding their horses 75 miles over the bucolic landscape. They didn’t have modern saddles with titanium rails or gel padding.

We hit Kansas Highway 177 and turn south. Last year the winds here were gale force. Forget bucolic. Even the cows were down in the tuck position. At 12:50 we sail down the river valley into Council Grove and cross the bridge over the Neosho. Main Street is lined with limestone buildings and American flags. The Hays House is bustling. So is the Cottage House motel and the five-and-dime store, which is having a sidewalk sale. But underneath the flags, more store fronts sit shuttered this year: The corner pizza joint; the Mexican restaurant.

Sunday. Three long hills climb south out of Council Grove to Cottonwood Falls. From the ridges, the grasslands run into the long shadows of the morning light, burying your heart in the Great Plains. A small stone building, long abandoned but once used as both a school and a church, sits sentinel on a hill. The gravel road up to it is steep and rocky, like the road to peace and prosperity that the congregation once prayed for.

A few miles south, off the east side of the road, a large oak tree shades a small, simple cemetery. Reds, yellows and blues splash from behind the gravestones, the flags and flowers reminding us of the colors of life.

In Cottonwood Falls, the majestic courthouse is lord over the broad red brick avenue. The bank, clothing store and hotel look healthy. The Emma Chase cafe is set for the invasion of 150 cyclists, having laid out a $7.50 buffet the size of Rhode Island: fried chicken, roast pork, potatoes, strawberry rhubarb pie and ice cream. The sudden blip in the economy won’t help the two stores three doors down, now shuttered and empty, elegant spaces lying fallow in the fertile history of Kansas.

Monday, Memorial Day. The morning is cool and the flags in Council Grove are flapping north. The wind will blow us back to Topeka in record time. Along U.S. 56 and Kansas 99 the little known Cow Law is being verified: Cows in the fields are facing in the same direction. Artificial evolution – selective breeding – has rendered cows dumb. If the lead cow munches toward Topeka, the others follow.

At Auburn, the houses, cars and traffic multiply, replacing the grasslands. Auburn, once rural, is now a Topeka exurb evolving quickly toward suburb. It seems rural Kansas has two fates: going to earth on the plains or being swallowed by urban sprawl.

A long line of cars is waiting to pass me, heading for the American flags lining the roadside cemetery at the top of the hill. In a month, a long line of bicycles and support cars will race the professional peloton across the roads of the Tour de France. Sixty years ago, those roads carried a different peloton of tanks, foot soldiers, medics and those the medics could no longer help.

We remember them on Memorial Day. We remember the veterans of all wars, over there and here. And we remember the veteran towns in rural Kansas, the people departed, their limestone histories eroding to dust.