Trouble performing if statement inside a nested loop in python using two text files

I'm attempting to check GPS epochs (epochs.txt) against a range of times (strip-ranges.txt) to see how many epochs occurred during these times. However, I'm having trouble getting the inside loop to iterate. Here's a sample of my code:

import os
epochs = open("C:\\Users\\bcox\\Documents\\Bad-epochs.txt", "r").readline()
strips = open("C:\\Users\\bcox\\Documents\\Strip-ranges.txt","r").readlines()

counter = 0 #create counter object

for aLine in epochs:#outside for loop
    GPS = aLine
    for row in strips: #inside (nested) loop- loops bad epoch against strips
        val = row.split(",") #splits strips into two values per line
        stripA = float(val[0]) #start time of strip
        stripB = float(val[1]) #end time of strip
        if stripA <= GPS <= stripB: #if the epoch from Bad-epochs.txt is between the start and end time, adds 1 to counter
            counter += 1 #adds to counter
        else:
            pass


print "The final count is %i" %counter

Every time I run the code, the counter is still at 0, although I know there should be around 100-150 GPS epochs that fall between the strip ranges. I've tried just opening the 'strips' file and using strips.seek(0) before the second for loop, to no avail. I realize there have been similar questions to this posted before, but none of the questions I've searched have yielded any answers that work. Thanks for any help or advice.