BEDSIDE SALUTE: Former County Supervisor Thomas F....

BEDSIDE SALUTE: Former County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley had a surprise visit this week as he recovers from back and neck surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Marine Corps officers from a nearby base dropped in to meet the 83-year-old retired Marine Corps general and wish him a speedy recovery. “It was really a big thrill for him,” says Riley’s wife, Emma Jane. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.” . . . Riley’s condition has been upgraded to fair and he’s been moved out of intensive care.

BEING FIRST: You know the people who had to have the neighborhood’s first microwave? Now they’ll want the first electronic “transponders,” says Greg Brooks of 91 Expressway Lanes. That’s the little gadget that will permit you to travel the new 10-mile express lanes on the Riverside Freeway--to open in a few weeks--billing you electronically. . . . “Some people are innovators, some will want to see how it works for others first,” Brooks says. But thousands of motorists have signed up to receive them--most after a recent wave of publicity about the lanes.

PHARMER GREG: If 20th-Century advances were historic, wait until you see what’s up in the 21st, writes UC Irvine physics professor Gregory Benford in this month’s Reason magazine. . . . Just one example: Animals--”pharm animals”--that can produce medicine, through editing of the genes that control their internal chemistry. “Imagine a cow that can produce insulin,” says Benford. . . . But cows beware: By the end of the century, he writes, they’ll probably be obsolete.

ALL ABOARD: Your neighbors may talk about a ski vacation to Tahoe or Big Bear. How many say they’re going boarding ? Officials at the Ski and Snowboard Show--today through Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center--contend the latter sport is snowballing. Says Wing Lam of the Newport Beach-based U.S. Amateur Snowboard Assn.: “Snowboarding classes at Snow Summit and Bear Mountain are packed with parents crossing over from skiing.” One reason: It’s something they can do with the kids. . . . The show includes more than 250 exhibitors.