Apologies that it took a bit to reply to this! Glad to hear you've been enjoying the game in spite of those issues.
These are some good suggestions, I'll run them by our coder and see what we can do!
Hey, apologies for taking so long! Life hit everyone at Sad Folks Interactive rapidly and repeatedly and pushed this update much further back than any of us had anticipated.
We're still awaiting approval for the Catalog update, but soon as it is, both of your requests have been implemented. The "Use the Crank" message vanishes after a couple seconds of play, and you can now use A to propel yourself upwards during gameplay. Hope you enjoy!