formatting string and returning as geojson

[garynobles]

I tested using the test_data()
As you know that works fine, but when I use db_query() instead it throws an error
ValueError: could not convert string to float

I went through the debugging (step through) and in the def parse_row(row)
key: 'g'
code: 'e'
at geo_data = [parse_row(row[1]) for row in cur]
row: <class 'tuple'>: ('9fde ... 246b', 'geo12.08 ... 45.50 ... 0.000000test')

So it looks like something is going wrong in the following, for some reason the key (row[0])is being ignored and the row[1] is behaving strangely, perhaps tuples behave differently? I've spent today looking into this, but I'm struggling to find the solution, strange that it works for the test_data() but not the database data. Should I add I'm using Python 3?

def parse_row(row):
    # extract lat, lon
    # you may need to round the float number to
    # correct number of decimal digits
    key = row[0]
    code=row[1][:3]
    lat = float(row[1][3:15])
    lon = float(row[1][15:27])
    elevation = float(row[1][27:39])
    descr = row[1][39:]
    return geojson.Feature(geometry=geojson.Point((lon, lat, elevation)), id=key,
                           properties={'code':code, 'elevation':elevation, 'description':descr})