Just wrap the bottoms of your pants around your legs and put them into your socks. Both sides. If you leave the left size loose, you inevitably will get it caught in the bottle cage, or if you have your pump on the seat tube, on that. \

You don't need bands or clips that way -- and you won't have to worry about putting them on, taking them off, and losing them.

I should add, also, that you should pull the legs of your pants up about an inch to reduce pressure of the fabric on your knee cap. If you don't give it some slack, you can cause your knee cap to go off track a little, resulting in pain.

You also can get a chainring guard to fit to the outer chainring, provided it has the required holes and the guard is the correct diameter. Some chainsets come with them attached -- the LX one on my current touring bike did. The advantage here is that you can leave the cuffs of your trousers open, although catching on the bottle cage might still be an issue.

Machka and I considered riding GMR when we were in California a week or so ago, but the two places where we stayed, San Diego and San Luis Obispo, were just too far away for it to be convenient with the other stuff we wanted to do. It is, however, on my wishlist for another LA visit in the future.