I definitely had a decade of my life where whitewater kayaking was my drug of choice, and I agree 100%. I think one of the things that we have so little intuition for is how massive water is. I don't even know if that is the right word, or if we have a word.

As a point of reference the standard for an Olympic artificial whitewater canoe/kayak course is something like 12 cubic meters per second (you might hear kayakers saying cumets).

A cubic meter of water literally weighs a ton (1000kg).

12 m³/s is approximately equivalent to a continuous stream of nose to tail Chevy Suburbans (3t each) at about 50 mph.

Real rivers typically have far higher flow rates --- 100 m³/s 3,500 ft³/s is not unknown